Chapter 5: Whomever fit to survive.
In Retrospect, Sometimes she wishes she had stayed on Jakku .
At least in Jakku she could see the end of everything, a desolate grave in the middle of the desert and the weights .. the stakes hung around her neck weren't this high.
She was a nobody .. and sometimes being a nobody is everything one should be.
She slays him a thousand times in his dreams and he stands helpless, he doesnot even scream in a scene so familiar on a narrow bridge plunged in darkness. A light sabre and a dimly lit chamber and "Anything, Rey" then she ignites it and it pierces through his flesh ... he falls, he keeps falling and he never reaches the ground. His screams are strangled in his throat as he wakes up in an icy cot and a room, always so foreign that he takes a moment to recognise. It is dark ... It is lonely and he isnot sure if he was the one dreaming or she was.
And so he distracts himself by whatever lingering beyond their Galaxy .. the Jedi, they never really bothered to consider and the empire was too busy exterminating any source of opposition to think about whatever lies beyond.
but Ren has always sensed it was ugly .. Ren knew it was bidding its time to manifest and perhaps conquest this galaxy so ripped apart and torn by years of civil war and instability.
He is a son of a politician after all, he knows better the inevitable.
The New republic was chasing after her that she knew, sure they hadnot put a bounty on her head .. for they weren't that stupid, after all she was a Jedi and has been a resistance hero and is still for many. She doesn't think there is another reason though or rather she wouldn't dwell on it.
And she stays off the radar for quite sometime before she is found by the second least person whom she wanted to be found by.
"I believe we have never met in pereson before, Rey"
'Hux' She recognised And before she could lunge, he gestured the rest of his ... Troops? to advance.
"It's general Hux to you" his voice was filled with imposition, authority that she admits fazed her a little. things didn't work like that in the resistance. The only one whom they bothered calling by a certain honorific was the late general Organa and according to Poe, it didn't end up so well when someone tried to instill some order and hierarchy in the resistance.
"It seems that all force users are quite temperamental though honestly given your tactics and prowess in the war I thought you were much calmer, much more in control than the insufferable fool. Yes, Rey?"
"It is Jedi for you" She indignantly replied
'So it was true, they were in discordance all along' she always thought that the rumours of the tension between Ren and Hux were a ploy instigated by the first order to diverge the resistance.
"I have a proposition you shouldn't refuse" It turned out it was not his proposition to begin with.
'It isn't too late'
He hears her voice clear in his head . It is funny how things have changed, Ben muses.
'It isn't too late' he pleads for her to listen, to respond.
Nothing, nothing comes from her side and his mind conjures the what ifs, what if she is caught and what if she isn't and they are both as equally terrifying and suddenly Luke makes sense, his dilemma at least, his parents make sense and everything he looked down upon with both amusement and desdain makes utter sense.
'Come back, Come back even if not to me or for me, but just come back. Things , they aren't the same as they used to. Things are orderly , well organised. It is turning out well, Rey. this joint governance is turning out just fine."
Hux, She learns, isnot the empty head she used to think he is, In fact, she has been yet naïve again to imagine him as a barbaric uncivilised disorganised general. He is calculative, he is cold and he is in fact quite intelligent ... the making of a great sith, had he got the force potential.
'Maybe, that is why he didn't have it in the first place, such mind, such pride with such power yields indomitable tyranny.'
One thing their galaxy isn't deficient in.
"So, let me just sum this up, you want me to help you rally people against Ren, so another galaxy can conquer him then reinstate you as emperor"
"Supreme leader"
"Whatever .. under their reign"
"Exactly"
"And what gain will I have from this?"
"Revenge for a starter for your lovely pilot whom he killed in the war, Revenge for Han Solo ... and you might be surprised this Galaxy shares a whole lot of ideals with the former resistance"
'They wouldn't have hired you if they do'
"And what choice do I have in this?"
"In fact" Hux rose to full height from the chair opposite to her in the interrogation room "You have no choice in this at all, you will do what they like willingly or not"
"It will take more than your empty threats to scare me"
"I know, you are a force user after all, a Jedi" However he proceeded " Those folks are much stronger than you, much advanced so you can take whatever force you have and toss it down the drain."
And out of the blue ,against all common sense she remembered Poe, how he used to mock Hux's exaggerated thespian sense and couldn't help but smile.
She even remembered Ren's whining while he was listening to his speeches.
"Oh, you are so full of yourself"
"I will take that as a NO"
She prepared to leave, knowing very well she will have to fight her way to.
Yet, she wasn't prepared to lose.
They were force resistant.
She was Captive.