Chapter One
The first time it happens, Rey is convinced that she has well and truly lost her mind. That the desert heat, stifling and relentless, has finally driven her past the brink of sanity, as she always knew it one day would.
She's on the side of the road, her old Mustang angry and spitting as it bakes under the dry New Mexico sun. The engine is overworked and overheated and she's doing what she can to ease its rage, pouring a mix of water and coolant—both practically boiling from where they lay stashed in the trunk of the car—into the steaming radiator.
That's when the sound of the world falls away and her vision doubles and blurs before it shifts back into focus, into a heightened clarity that is unsettlingly sharp—like a beam of light that forgot to cast its shadow. That's when she sees him. A man with dark hair and dark eyes and alabaster skin standing at the edge of the road, less than 20 feet from where she is still bent over the hood of her car.
Must be an angel. The thought floats, unbidden, through her mind. Or a ghost.
Whatever he is, she knows he can't be real. Living men don't just appear from the nothingness of the desert landscape. They don't wear suits of midnight black, the rich fabric somehow unmarred by the dirt and the grit that floats through the air and lays at their feet. And they don't look at her—a desert rat from a nowhere town—like she is the last bastion of hope in a world ravaged by war. Like she is a miracle.
They stand there for a moment, chests rising and falling in time, and Rey thinks, wildly, that the hazy heat that reflects off the ground is like a mirror. That maybe the man is really her and she is him—in another universe or another time or maybe even in this life now. But then the sun shifts just slightly in the sky and he takes a step forward and the blood that drips from his knuckles is thrown into focus, a cruel flash of red in a world of yellow and brown. The illusion shatters and a cold shiver of fear slices down Rey's spine, raising goosebumps on her skin despite the heat.
The man takes another step and Rey closes her eyes. She starts to count, slow and steady—like this is a game and she's giving him time to hide. She counts in time with the pulse of the blood in her veins, breathing through the fear—old and familiar—that has taken hold of her chest.
She doesn't open her eyes until she gets to ten and when she does, he is gone. An angel sent back to heaven. A ghost turned back to dust.
It should be a relief, to turn and find that she is once again alone on the edge of the cracked and dusty road. It should be a comfort to no longer be hunted by a dark desert spirit. But all she feels, as she wipes the sweat from her eyes with grease-marked fingers, is an aching sense of loss. Like waking up from a dream you've already forgotten. Even when you can still feel the slip of it on your skin and the taste of it on your tongue.
The sun blazes overhead, causing sweat to bead on her back and a dusty rose to rise on the skin of her shoulders. Rey feels these things, taking careful stock of each of them in an effort to tether herself back to some semblance of sanity. Then she slams the hood of the car closed and slides into the front seat, whispering a word of thanks to a faceless god when the engine stutters to life.
She keeps her eyes on the faded yellow lines that mark the road as she makes her way back to her little corner of the desert, never daring to look behind her to see what ghosts might be following her there.
-x-
Kylo Ren is unbalanced, teetering just on the edge of sanity. There's a dead man at his feet, warm blood running in rivulets across the otherwise pristine marble floor. There's blood on his hands too, already sticky and half congealed and Kylo can't be sure whether it's his or the dead man's or some sick mix of the two, but it's the stench of it—dark and metallic—that's choking the air from his lungs. He swallows back the vomit that threatens to rise in his throat and takes deep, steadying breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth.
It's an old trick from his childhood—something his mother used to make him do when the panic would settle in his chest and he'd gasp like he was born without lungs, like he never learned to breathe. He focuses on the rhythm—the steady rising and falling—and it almost works to quell the panic that's coursing through his veins, but then he looks up and he sees her. A girl. Bathed in light, too bright for the shadowed room they are standing in, and looking utterly terrified.
At first, he feels only relief. Because even though there are countless things about this day that he doesn't understand, he is certain that he is standing in a secure space—one room, windowless, soundproofed, and locked from the inside. So if a girl is there with him, then this must be a dream. And if it's a dream, then the blood on the floor isn't real. And the man he killed isn't dead. And there is still time to go back, to cross over that terrible line in the sand, to erase the blood from his hands, to fix it.
He breathes fully, deeply, the panic receding from his veins like the pull of the moon on an ocean's tide. Then he finds himself stepping toward the girl—this beautiful, miraculous creature that he has somehow dreamed up. He is enthralled by the damp curls that have fallen loose from the bun piled high on her head. By the slow drip of the sweat that falls from behind her ear. By the depth of her green eyes—wide and afraid and familiar.
She closes those eyes like the slamming of a door and the rejection cuts him to the bone, but it's not enough to keep him from moving closer, bridging the gap between them with each second that passes. He is almost to her. So close he can see the dusting of freckles that cross her nose and her chest. So close he can smell her in the air—a mix of dirt and sweat and engine grease, so much sweeter than the blood he is tracking across the room.
He walks as a man possessed. A wolf. Desperate to touch her, to taste her while he has her in his grasp. Then he blinks, like the fool that he is, and she is gone.
The world seems much louder in her absence. The sounds of the city waft up from the street, too clear, too real. That's when Kylo realizes that he hasn't woken up. Because he isn't dreaming.
Because he is terribly, undoubtedly awake.
He gives himself the span of a single breath to mourn the loss of the girl, the man he might have been for her, and the life they could have lived—in another timeline or perhaps another universe. Somewhere far away from this moment and this room and the man he has chosen to be. Then he pulls a phone from his pocket—prepaid and untraceable—and dials the first of two numbers in the contacts.
Snoke answers on the first ring and though he doesn't whisper a single world, Kylo would know the sound of his rasping breath anywhere.
"It's done," Kylo declares into the void, an answer to an unspoken question.
Snoke laughs, soft and cruel and the sound of it sends a chill down Kylo's spine. "Excellent," he purrs. "Call Hux for clean-up and report to headquarters when you're through. Tonight, we celebrate."
-x-
Rey doesn't breathe a full breath until the weathered gates of Niima Outpost cut a line through the horizon. And even then, her lungs don't fill easily until she pulls up to her trailer, settled in the back of the community amongst the dirt and the few tiny shrubs that manage to peek through the cracks in the earth. Everything is as she left it—the metal hull of the airstream, the makeshift deck made from mismatched pieces of scrap wood, the dirt-stained wooden planters lining the perimeter of the property and filled with succulents—each one a different color, each row a different kind.
The reliability of these small treasures help to calm her nerves and settle her spirit, but she still feels a tug—persistent and strange—at the back of her mind. As if she's been tethered to that place in the road and to the man who stood there. But Rey doesn't have the patience for dwelling on such things. Not when there is work to be done. So she shakes her head and pulls the hair from her face, deftly tying it back in a knot at the base of her neck, and wills herself to focus. To forget.
She tends to the garden first, carefully plucking the more mature plants from their home in the wooden planters and transferring them to individual pots, ready to be sold to tourists passing through the Outpost on their way to grander sights—the Grand Canyon, usually. Sometimes White Sands. She sifts through the soil with bare hands, letting the dirt and the grit bore its way under her nails, staining her skin a ruddy brown. It's a routine she's long since memorized, but she can't help the little rush of pride she feels each time she plucks a plant from the soil, carefully minding the roots, and finds that it has managed to survive—to flourish—with hardly anything at all. Some sun, some shade, a bit of water. A strange, lucky miracle.
The desert sun is low in the sky by the time she finishes with her chores, sending streaks of pink and purple across the rocky formations that are already bathed in shadow. Rey takes a moment to be grateful for the darkening sky, for the dusty air in her lungs, for the wide expanse of open land that surrounds her—so different from the crowded cell and the tiny bunk and the clanking metal bars she sometimes still hears in the quietest of desert nights. She takes a moment to be grateful for freedom—or something like it. Then she dusts her hands off on the side of her faded jeans and grabs a pocketful of kibble from a container stashed under the deck before setting off on the dusty trail that winds through the extent of the property.
The Outpost is quiet this time of night. The vendors have long since packed up their treasures, storing them in trunks and in trailers for another day and another crowd of wandering visitors. She scans the horizon for BB-8, the golden shepherd that controls the market's population of desert mice in exchange for fresh water and warm beds provided by the kindest of Niima's tenants—namely, Rey—but he is nowhere to be found.
"BB-8!" she calls down the trail, now bathed in a dusky grey that makes it nearly impossible to tell the rocks from the shadows.
She waits for the soft shuffling of paws on flattened dirt, but it doesn't come. There is only the soft whistle of the wind in her ears and the low rumble of a truck's engine drifting down from a road she can't see. She's just about to turn back, certain that BB-8 will find his way home when he's ready, when she feels it—the tug on her soul. The sudden dampening of sound. And then, footsteps echoing down the darkened path, too wide and too heavy for a dog, for any animal that stalks the grounds of the Outpost.
Rey turns, eyes narrowed in the darkness, and finds him less than an arms width away. The angel. The ghost. The man with dark eyes and dark hair that falls in soft waves to his shoulders. She loses the breath in her lungs to the shock of it, her body frozen in place by some invisible force.
This time, his hands are clean. But still, there's the fear—sharp and cruel—boring its way through her skull. Adrenaline roars in Rey's veins and suddenly she is ready to run, to scream, to fight for her life the way she has had to fight for it so many times before. But before she can move, before she can do any of it, he does something that shakes her to her core.
He steps back and he speaks, his words a low whisper against her skin in the night.
"Are you real?"