A Ghtroc 690, Fully Restored
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Scarif is as blue as Takodana was green. Oceanic, like Ahch-To, but warm and bustling with activity, where Master Luke's hideaway had been cold and isolated.
Rey loves this small, tropical planet, with its bright waters and dramatic history. Leia told her the story of the rogue rebels who stole the plans to the first Death Star from this place, who fought to save the galaxy from imperial subjugation.
"Without them, who knows how many worlds could have ended up like Alderaan?" Leia had said.
A blast leveled the imperial security complex and all its surroundings, but that had been decades ago, and now there's no evidence of such destruction. Shipyards have sprung up across the planet, a Senate-mandated initiative to bring decent spacecrafts to the Outer Rim. It was a noble project, from what Rey understands, meant to provide poor, backwater worlds with better interstellar transportation—so that people like her wouldn't be left to rot on a junkyard planet with no way to escape.
(That isn't quite true, though, and Rey knows it. She had opportunities to leave Jakku, long before Finn showed up; she just never took them.)
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A city of sorts has cropped up on the blast site, built over the ashes of an imperial base. Visiting Andor might bother her, if she was a different sort of person, but growing up on a graveyard cured her of squeamishness and superstition early on.
This planet is proof that life always continues, and Rey wants to believe in the hopefulness that it signifies. Besides, the weather is gorgeous and the food is excellent.
It's as good a place as any for a vacation.
Stalls line the town square, the locals hocking all kinds of Scarif memorabilia, but Rey has no need for knick-knacks or souvenirs, and she isn't interested in any Andoran wares unless she can eat them.
She stops at a cantankerous vendor's stall and buys a fruity drink. It's obnoxiously pink, overpriced, and tooth-rottingly sweet. Rey is slightly disappointed in herself for enjoying it so much—but only slightly. She downs it in a matter of seconds and pays for another one.
She's still sipping on her guilty pleasure when another vendor waves at her and cries, "What a lovely girl! You should buy a necklace as pretty as you are. They're made with real kyber crystals, just like the Jedi once used in their lightsabers—"
She hurries along, almost amused, because if that man actually has a table full of kyber crystals, then she's a luggabeast. But something about the vendor bothers Rey too. Maybe because he spoke of the Jedi like an irrelevant thing, a relic of the past. So unworthy of respect that he had no trouble using the mystique surrounding their famous weapons to make a few quick credits.
The Jedi Order may be weakened and scattered, but it isn't dead—despite Kylo Ren's best efforts.
No, she won't think of him. (Even though there's some part of Rey, small and deeply buried, that always thinks of her enemy.)
She just wants to go home. There's a war being waged, and she's lounging on a tropical paradise in the Outer Rim, ten thousand light years away from anywhere relevant. Idleness has never been a vice that she could afford to indulge, and as beautiful as this world is, Rey feels useless. Wasting her time when there are important things to be done.
But Leia had told her to relax somewhere remote, far from the fighting. Her exact words had been, Go find a beach to sun yourself on, or I swear on the Force, I will order you to take a vacation.
So, here she is, on Scarif, doing nothing of consequence.
Rey doubles back to the kyber crystal vendor, buys a necklace, and loops it around her throat. If nothing else, it will give Luke a laugh when he sees it.
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It's easy enough to find swimwear at a local shop, and Rey spends all afternoon at the beach, as her general commanded. She wades through the shallows, collecting seashells of every shape and size. Wet sand squishes between her toes, somehow gritty and soft at once, and she flexes her feet just to savor the sensation. It's childish—the sort of pointless pleasure she rarely had much time for even when she was a child—and Rey stops, feeling silly and a bit guilty. She ventures further in, until she can no longer touch the ocean floor, and starts treading water.
It's peaceful here. Neutral ground, unmarred by this war at least, and Rey tries to appreciate having time to herself again. The Resistance, for all its good, is rarely an organization that gives her much space, and part of Rey misses the self-centered independence of her life on Jakku. She can't be betrayed if she doesn't trust, can't be abandoned if she has no attachments. Being alone is better.
(Except, Rey isn't alone, not really. Because she feels the pull toward Kylo Ren, every moment of every day. It thrums beneath her skin, lurks at the very back of her mind, a compulsion so subtle that she can almost, but not quite, ignore it. Some connection was drawn between them on Starkiller, nearly a year ago, a thread within the Force that binds Rey to her enemy, and she can't figure out how to sever it.)
She swims until the sunny afternoon fades into dusk, then wanders back to her hotel, wearing nothing but a wrap over her swimsuit. On the way, she buys a plate piled high with fried fish and another drink from the grumpy vendor. This one is neon green, more sour than sweet, its flavor as bright as its color.
Rey is on vacation in a idyllic place, with a belly full of delicious food, and she's (almost) alone. If she's ever felt safer, she can't remember it.
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Someone is tailing her. Rey is three blocks away from her hotel when she realizes that she has a follower, a stranger who keeps just enough distance between them to seem innocent—but he turns when she turns, and pauses when she pauses. Like a shadow that falls thirty feet behind its owner, reflecting her movements. If he's trying to be subtle, he's not very good at it.
She rounds a corner into an alleyway, draws her saberstaff, and waits for her pursuer.
Rey knows, before she sees him, that it's Kylo. She can feel him, the background trace of his presence in the Force, suddenly vivid and oppressive, as he walks closer.
So, when he steps around the corner, it doesn't shock her to see him here; what does surprise Rey is catching him like this. Unmasked and dressed in practical, everyday clothes—an olive green shirt, brown jacket, dark pants. It's so strange to see him this way, such a menacing creature looking almost common, that Rey freezes. For a moment, she thinks she's mistaken an average man for her enemy, but no, his face is one-of-a-kind, unforgettable. Even more so, now that a raw, ugly scar divides his strong features.
And there's the pull of familiarity and rightness that she feels, deep in her gut, now that she's faced with him again. Rey has tried to ignore the odd, gnawing pain of his absence, like an itch she can't scratch, that has left her constantly annoyed and unsatisfied for a year. Now that he's three feet away, that pain blossoms into a bone-deep ache, and it's somehow both soothed and exacerbated by his presence.
This is the Force, she knows, drawing them together, but Rey doesn't care about whatever greater purpose a higher power has in store for them. She hates this man, and she despises any connection they have, no matter how powerful its origin.
Rey ignites her saberstaff, and it's only the tug of the Force, pulsing low in her belly, that keeps her from taking off his head right then.
Kylo doesn't draw his own lightsaber—although she sees it, a crude hilt with a distinctive crossguard, secured by a loop on his belt. Instead, he holds up his hands, and says, "I don't want to fight."
Rey keeps a steady grip on her saberstaff. "Of course not. You just want to knock me out and drag me back to your master. Make an apprentice out of me."
Kylo gives a half-nod, like honesty (as if he possesses any of that) urges him acknowledge the truth of her accusation. "I do want to teach you, but I see now that you can't be bullied into becoming my student."
He sounds genuine, and his dark eyes shine with sincerity. Still, Rey knows better than to believe any claim of Kylo Ren's. "What are you doing here?" she asks.
"Risking my life, apparently," he says, looking pointedly at her lit saberstaff.
Then Kylo smirks, and Rey feels an uncomfortable lurch of deja vu: it's the same expression he wore when he interrogated her, that brief flicker of a smile as he'd taunted her.
"Give me a straight answer, or I'll kill you," Rey says.
"I've been looking for you since Starkiller," he says, in a rush, a confession he can't seem to hold back for another moment. "There's something between us. The Force, driving us toward each other—"
"You're crazy," Rey says, but her hands are shaking on her saberstaff, and she doesn't want to fight anymore. She wants to run, far away, and never face Kylo again, because she can feel what he feels (a turbulent mess of emotions, fear and anger, guilt and yearning—yearning for her—overwhelming in intensity) and Rey can't stand it.
She didn't ask for this, she didn't seek it out, and she doesn't want it.
"It's no good to lie," he says. "I can feel you trying to push it down, but you can't. Neither can I."
Don't be afraid, he'd said, back on Starkiller, and she knows now that he meant of this, the connection forged between them.
Rey has never been more afraid in her life.
If Kylo chooses to draw his lightsaber now, she's a dead woman. There's too much—she's being suffocated, surrounded, overcome, by the storm of pure feeling inside of him.
The light of her saberstaff extinguishes, and without its golden glow, the alleyway is plunged into darkness.
Rey runs, and she hopes that Kylo doesn't follow.
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There is no moon on Scarif. A thousand stars stipple the black sky, looking down on Andor's beach, but without moonlight their shine seems wan, the darkness impossibly deep.
Rey sits in the sand, legs outstretched so that the cold reach of the surf laps at her feet. Waves draw out, then roll in, the rhythms of the sea gentle, slow, predictable.
If Kylo wasn't looming behind her, unwanted and uninvited, she might find peace in the soothing brush of water on her skin.
"If you insist on following me, you might as well sit down," Rey says.
She tries to sound nonchalant and brave, but he sees right through her. Rey knows, because she can feel him looking underneath her facade, brushing away her counterfeit courage to unearth the fear that lurks below.
It's nothing like what he did to her on Starkiller. There's the same shocking intrusion of another person's presence in her own mind, but Kylo's interrogation was invasive and painful—a violent battle between his will and hers—and this doesn't hurt at all. It's intimate, more like a dance than anything else.
He sits next to her, his broad body spare inches away, and Rey shudders at the sensation. Their emotions tangle together: his anxiety exacerbates her own, her fear inflames his guilt, their mutual desire (to draw closer, to touch) grows greater as they recognize it within each other.
I need him—
I need her—
Somehow it's all twisted together and turned back on itself. Mirrors facing each other, spawning infinite reflections, swallowing them whole—
Kylo takes her hand, and Rey gasps.
She sees everything he's buried, everything he tries so hard to hide, and she can sense him dissecting her secrets just as thoroughly in turn; it's terrifying, but order comes through the insight. With one touch, their minds become entwined in concert rather than chaos.
"What's happening to us?" she asks.
He squeezes her hand, holding on too hard—
Kylo's grip softens. I always hurt her, even when I don't mean to.
He regrets the pain he's caused her, and no matter how little she wants to, Rey finds herself leaning toward forgiveness. But there isn't a creature in the galaxy that deserves compassion less than this one, and she won't let the Force coerce her into offering absolution he hasn't earned.
Compassion is the foundation of the light side, Kylo thinks. Shouldn't that be easy for you?
"Stop it," Rey says.
"Stop thinking?" Kylo asks. "That should be easy."
His sarcasm reminds her of Han, and they both flinch from that thought.
Rey recovers first, and she says, "It shouldn't be so different from the way you usually operate."
Kylo may be powerful, but he's unfocused, heedless, impulsive. A temperamental mess, really.
He leans down, until he's bowed low enough to whisper in her ear. "You like the way I am, and that bothers you. You wish you could still dismiss me as a monster, but I'm too real to you for that now. Too close."
Rey shivers. Unmasked, his voice is smooth, his speech resonant and round. As deceptively beautiful as the rest of him.
He laughs, a soft sound that brings butterflies flickering to life in her belly. "Don't be embarrassed," he says. "I thought you were beautiful the first time I saw you."
It's true; he did. She sees herself through his eyes, as he remembers their meeting on Takodana. A desert girl frozen in the middle of a green forest, dirty and disheveled, but so vibrant, so strong.
Rey says, "I don't care," and rips her hand out of Kylo's grasp.
She prays that the bond between them will weaken, even if it dissolves into a messy conflux of mixed minds. But breaking contact doesn't change anything; they're still tethered together. Connected with perfect, profound synchronicity.
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It seems foolish to send him away. Kylo will still be in her head, no matter how much space she puts between them. Besides, it's best if she keeps a close watch on him. Getting a front row seat to this man's troubled mind has only given Rey more reason to mistrust him, not less.
"Well I don't trust you either," Kylo says, so waspishly that Rey can't help but smile.
Outside, surrounded by the heat of a tropical night, Rey had almost forgotten how little she was wearing. Now, back in the climate-controlled cool of her hotel room, she feels naked in her swimsuit and wrap.
It doesn't help that she knows exactly what Kylo is thinking right now.
"You're sleeping on the floor," she says.
He kicks off his shoes and stretches out beside her bed, using his jacket as a pillow.
It surprises Rey, how obedient he can be, this hateful creature who once hunted her across the galaxy.
She goes to the 'fresher, showers off the sand and salt from a day at the beach, and pulls on her most covering sleepwear. Not that it much matters now; Rey could cover herself from head to toe, and she'd still be vulnerable, exposed.
She crawls into bed and burrows beneath the covers, seeking out warmth, privacy. It's too clean, too soft, and she can't relax.
Kylo isn't asleep either. He lies on his side, curled away from her, shivering.
If she'd been thinking practically, Rey would have taken the floor, but the principle of the thing stopped her. Forfeiting her bed to an enemy? She might as well shine his boots and cook him breakfast in the morning. Spite overruled pragmatism, and now she's not going to get a wink of sleep.
"I don't want the bed," Kylo says. "It would be as wasted on me as it is on you."
Because he doesn't sleep. She sees, as plainly as if these moments had happened to her, that Kylo grabs catnaps on his bedroom floor, or in his living room armchair, then uses his frustration to fuel his powers through the Force. He forges exhaustion into anger, anger into energy.
"That's awful," Rey says, without quite meaning to. Then she shakes her head. "Sorry, I didn't meant to—this isn't my business—"
"It's fine," he says. "My mind has never been a private place, and—well, at least with you it doesn't hurt. So look all you like."
Rey has been doing her best to resist rifling through his past, picking apart personal moments, but when he offers himself up like this, how can she resist?
For the first time since he took her hand on the beach, Rey stops trying to block the flood of feelings that spill through their connection. She lets herself reach, touch, witness.
So much pain and fear, loneliness and guilt. So many restless nights. He wishes he were stronger, that he could live up to the legacy of Darth Vader. Violence dispels his weakness, and it's always been easy to lash out. To cling to rage so that he doesn't have to feel anything else.
There's so much that Kylo regrets—Han most of all—but it doesn't stop him from keeping to the path he's chosen. (Because it's too late, and he doesn't deserve any better. Because inflicting pain is all he's even been any good at, or good for.) He prays to go home, even though he no longer has a home to return to.
He wants to kill everyone who has ever hurt him. He wants to die.
"Do you feel like this all the time?" Rey asks.
There's a long quiet, heavy with his shame, before he finally whispers, "Yes."
"No wonder you're such a wreck."
It's in Rey's nature to fix broken things, and she wonders what it might take to put the pieces of this ruined man back together. If it would be possible at all. If he even wants to heal.
Kylo laughs. "I'm not a busted ship that needs repairs."
"No, and it's not my job to salvage you anyway."
Rey has no obligation to Kylo, not even if the Force wills it. It isn't that she feels compelled to help him. She simply wants to, and that's even more terrifying.
Rey tosses a pillow at him.
She can't see it, but Rey knows he's smiling. "You only threw this pillow so I'd have one to sleep on."
He's right, and Rey hadn't even realized her own intentions until he pointed them out.
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Kylo Ren is not a good man.
He's sorry for hurting her, not because he acknowledges the evil of his actions, but because he considers her different. Kylo thinks that Rey deserves special treatment, that she should be exempt from the violence he inflicts on everyone else. (Because he wants her; because the Force has bound them together; because she's his.)
"I'm not yours," Rey says.
They're lying on the floor, buried in a nest of blankets and pillows. Awake, close—too close—yet not touching. Dawn light spills through the windows, weak and pale, but bright enough for her to see Kylo scowl. He doesn't answer.
"This thing between us—whatever it is, wherever it came from—it doesn't mean I belong to you," Rey says. "I don't belong to anyone."
She sits up and runs a hand through her loose hair, still damp from last night's shower, and pulls it into three buns. It's a movement that comes as naturally to her as lightsaber forms, as dissecting old droids. Perfect efficiency borne from endless, repetitive practice.
Rey freezes when she feels Kylo caressing the nape of her neck, those strong fingers sliding down, down, beneath the collar of her shirt, until he touches the dip between her shoulder blades.
"Not yet," Kylo murmurs. "But we'll belong to each other soon. Can't you feel it?"
It feels so good, the strength of his blunt fingers brushing her skin, and Rey wishes he would touch her elsewhere (everywhere).
Then his breath fans against her throat, warm and damp when Kylo says, "If you want."
"I don't," Rey says.
If Kylo catches this lie, he at least has the grace not to mention it.
They spend the entirety of Rey's second vacation day curled up on the floor, nestled close in that pile of fluffy pillows and warm blankets. They leave only to use the 'fresher or order food.
Kylo has no reservations about asking for the most expensive things on the menu, and when Rey grumbles that he's going to cost her every credit she has, he looks at her like she's foolish.
"Why bother paying?"
Rey smacks him across his broad chest. "Because I'm not a thief, you dimwit."
He catches her hand before she can withdraw it. Keeps it held close against his bare skin, over his heart. Taking off his shirt was a clumsy attempt at seduction, but Rey can't muster up the proper derision for this strategy, because it might be working.
He's beautiful, and here, and with their minds melded like this, Rey can see all of the dark, frightened corners of his soul. Every vulnerability, every scrap of humanity hidden beneath the monster's mask.
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By the third day, they disentangle themselves from one another, and Rey insists that they leave the hotel. They need to talk, and if they stay cloistered in her room, that's never going to happen.
She takes Kylo to the crystal vendor, simply to see him sneer at the fake wares. His annoyance is funny, for a moment—until he imagines igniting his lightsaber and showing the charlatan what a real kyber crystal is capable of. Then it's not so amusing anymore.
"He's harmless," Rey says, as she pulls Kylo away from the vendor, dragging him deep into the midday tourist crowd.
"He's a disrespectful fraud who's profiting from a legacy that isn't his," Kylo says, but he's growing calmer now, the longer her hand clings to his jacket sleeve. Steadying him, tugging him, step by careful step, away from slaughter.
I shouldn't have to keep him on a leash, Rey thinks.
By the time they find a quiet place on the beach, she's in a foul mood, and Rey's determination to talk has wavered.
She has good reason not to trust Kylo, even if she disregards her personal grievances against him. Abandonment and more betrayals than she can count have taught her how precarious it is to put your faith in anyone besides yourself.
She thinks of her parents, leaving her to fight for survival on a starship graveyard. Plutt's thugs, who beat her half to death over a deal that went sour. The other scavengers, sabotaging rivals and partners alike, to ensure their own own best interests—Devi and Strunk, most of all, because they took so much from her.
"What did they steal from you?" Kylo asks.
His voice is harder and less forgiving than she's ever heard it before. Rey can feel his fury sparking to violent life again, with far more power and purpose than when he considered maiming the crystal vendor.
"A Ghtroc 690, fully restored," Rey says. Then she feels foolish for giving such a plain answer, because how can he possibly understand what that ship meant to her? Its cost was so high; she starved for the better part of a year, hoarding the choicest scavenged pieces for her broken-down freighter, instead of trading them for portions.
And just when she'd started to believe that Devi and Strunk might be trustworthy—that she had perhaps made friends for the first time in her life—they'd double-crossed her. Stole the ship she'd found and rebuilt alongside them. They exploited Rey's hard labor and begrudging goodwill, then flew away in the prize she'd sacrificed so much for.
The worst part wasn't the food she'd lost, nor the work she'd wasted. No, the worst part was being left behind. Abandoned again.
"I know it sounds stupid, but when they stole that ship, they took away the only thing I'd ever felt any pride in, the only thing that gave me any hope for change," Rey whispers.
Kylo pulls her into his arms and presses a kiss to her temple. "You're the strongest person I've ever met. You have much more to take pride in than repairing a ship."
Rey could cry, because he means every word, and what does it say about her, that a man like this is the first to love her so wholly and without reservation?
She rests her head against his shoulder, breathing in the warm, masculine smell that clings to his skin.
"I can't take you back to the Resistance," Rey says. "You're not ready to leave your master, and you wouldn't cooperate."
Kylo's arms tighten around her, then he says against her hair, "You'd never agree to go with me either. You'd rather die than betray the people you love."
His deep voice, his scent, the heat of his strong body—it's all too close, and she drags herself away, seeking cleaner air and clearer thoughts.
"We're at a stalemate, then," Rey says.
"Maybe not." Kylo cups her face between his hands, makes her face him. For a moment, she thinks—she hopes—that he's going to kiss her.
Instead, he says, "Run away with me."
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Rey doesn't say yes, because that would be an outlandish, irresponsible thing to do. But the temptation is too great to ignore, so she also doesn't say no. Really, what other choices do they have? No matter where they go, they'll still be connected, and if Kylo chooses to hunt her down, he'll have all he needs to find her again.
They spend the rest of the week doing simple things, as if they're nothing more than tourists, whiling away their vacation on this remote, utopian planet. Everything they do, they do together, and at the end of each day, they fall asleep on the floor, tangled up in soft blankets and each other's bodies.
At night, Kylo wants to kiss her, caress her, make love to her, and Rey wants to let him.
Sometimes he'll picture all the things he wants to do to her, and wordlessly invite her to witness his imaginings. Sometimes Rey does the same, until Kylo has to turn away from her, breathing hard and trembling.
It's not his sexual fantasies that frighten her, though; it's the things he thinks, right as he's drifting off to sleep, when his mind is at its most open and vulnerable.
Kylo dreams of a life far from the First Order or the Resistance. They could become simple people and hide on a green planet (green, for Rey, because it's her favorite color). Maybe they'll raise crops, or a handful of children, or both.
When Rey falls asleep, she dreams Kylo Ren's dreams.
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Here on Scarif, they've been lost in their own little world, and Rey doesn't understand what a mistake she's made by allowing this until Kylo reminds her of his true nature.
They're passing a mechanic's bay when he stops, freezes, and stares at a ship. An old rustbucket freighter with a piss-poor paint job. The kind of garbage that Rey wouldn't have looked at twice, except—it's a Ghtroc 690. Her Ghtroc 690, the very one that Devi and Strunk stole from her on Jakku.
She's too stunned to move, frozen in place by the pain of a wound she'd never quite healed from. Kylo strides forward, rushing ahead with his lightsaber drawn, and it's only when that unstable plasma blade sparks to life, hissing its fury, that Rey sees Devi and Strunk, their backs turned to the dark knight behind them.
Run! she means to shout. Get out of here!
But Rey hates Devi and Strunk, and with Kylo's rage coursing through her, she can't bring herself to give a warning cry.
It's over quickly, at least. He takes off Strunk's head first, and when Devi turns to her lover, mouth open on a scream that she never has the time to voice, Kylo cuts her cleanly in half.
They flee Scarif on the Millennium Falcon, and Rey doesn't say one word to Kylo until they're in hyperspace, speeding away from the site of his latest crime.
"This is what you imagined for years," he says, and there's a plaintive note to his voice. "This is what you wanted."
He's more wrong than he can understand, yet still horrifyingly right.
"You were too afraid to hurt them, so I did it for you," Kylo says.
Rey doesn't know what to do. She doesn't want to stay with this man, because he brings out the worst in her, but running from him will endanger the Resistance. He'll only go back to his master, armed with all the secrets he's gleaned from her mind, and turn the full power of the First Order against her loved ones (Leia, Poe, BB-8, and Finn—Finn above all others).
Rey can't abandon Kylo, because the Force has pushed her into a neat little corner from which there is no escape.
When Rey finally speaks, all that she can bring herself to say is, "You're sick. Disgusting."
"I was just—I only meant to help." He sounds so young, almost childish. Contrite, but only because he's been caught in his wrongdoing.
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Kylo Ren is not a good man, and it isn't that she forgot this so much as she chose to ignore it. Now they're bound, entangled together through the Force, whether for good or ill, and Rey can't find a way to free herself.
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fin