Notes: My contribution to the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology 2017 - Celebrate the Waking. Many thanks to my ever supportive and long-suffering friends who not only got roped into beta, but had to endure far more whining and fretting than the length of this story warrants, and to my editing mods Alexandra and Mneme.
Devoid of Exaltation
Two years ago, the First Order had fallen.
Rey still remembered standing over Supreme Leader Snoke's corpse, too exhausted to even feel relief. Defeating him had taken everything out of Master Luke and her. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn't had to sacrifice a little bit of herself that day. She had been closer to falling than ever before, but she had clung to the Light with nails and teeth and the same sheer desperate stubbornness with which her younger self had clung to life on Jakku.
She had never wanted to return to Jakku, and to the girl that had learned to fight for survival long before she ever ran into a Dark Side adept.
Funny how little life cared what you wished for.
As soon as she left her shuttle on the crowded tarmac of Niima Outpost, Jakku's arid air washed over her like a wave of sand. It choked her and clogged her lungs, for a moment she felt like she was suffocating. High above her, Jakku's sun burned down as glaringly bright as ever.
Rey reached up to tuck the strips of cloth higher up her face, only to find nothing but smooth, uncovered skin. Her hands dropped back to her sides, and smoothed out the grey robes she wore. It had, in fact, been years since she clad herself like a scavenger.
At 25 and a Jedi Master in her own right, she made a striking figure in her robes. There wasn't much left of the girl who had fled Jakku.
Her eyes found the New Republic flag proudly flying over the tarmac.
She turned her gaze to the port master approaching her, and nodded towards the flag. "That's new. When did you get it?"
"Just in time for the celebrations, Master Jedi! Niima Outpost strives to look its best to welcome dignities from all over the New Republic, and beyond."
Her brows rose as the human kept chattering. It was true. At first glance, the tarmac was just larger and more crowded than ever before, but the changes were obvious if you looked closer. What had once been battered smuggler's ships were now sleek politicians' yachts and military vessels. Her own Order-issued shuttle looked tiny and drab amidst the selection of the galaxy's finest.
The scavenger in Rey itched to take a closer look. Just one peek, or maybe a peek inside… Nobody would ever need to know.
She tucked her hands into her sleeves like Master Luke, and tried to exude the elder Jedi's grave dignity. "I'm Rey, I'm representing the Jedi Order. You should have me on your list."
The port master wilted. "But… is Master Skywalker not…?" The man cut himself off, and replaced his crushed expression with a too-bright smile. "Not that we aren't happy to welcome you home, Master Rey! It's a great honor! All of Jakku is proud of you."
He didn't talk or look like someone who had spent much time on Jakku, his skin hadn't even been hardened by sun and sand yet. She shot him an unimpressed look. "I'm sure they are."
As she left the spaceport behind and walked into the town proper, Rey decided she wasn't even sure if she herself was proud of Jakku.
Niima Outpost was nothing like the place she had left behind.
The scavengers' tents were still there, even the blockhouse from which Unkar Plutt had once ruled the humble settlement, but the outpost had grown well beyond it with its new, neatly lined-up makeshift buildings.
There were colorfully dressed tourists strolling between the tents, and children who had never known thirst were buying ice cream cones from what had once been Unkar Plutt's Concession Stand.
Rey turned her back on the scene, and struggled to release her disquiet into the Force.
A Rodian jostled her, and sent half the contents of his basket of plush Teedos tumbling onto the ground.
She wordlessly helped gather up the toys before Jakku's cutting winds could blow them away.
"Thank you, Master Jedi," the Rodian said, and held out the last of the fallen Teedos to her. "It's yours if you want it, a welcome home gift."
Rey's brows knit together. "I don't…" Seeing the crestfallen look on the vendor's face, she reached for the gift, and awkwardly muttered, "Thanks." She ran her fingers over the plush Teedo's mask. It was cute. There shouldn't be anything cute about Teedos.
"Are there many people like you here?" He seemed to be no more a local than the man at the spaceport, the way he was constantly yanking at his ill-fitting desert gear.
"Of course!" He nodded eagerly. "Souvenirs, food stalls, whatever you could wish for. We don't expect business from any fancy politicians, of course, but there's their staff and more tourists yet. Remembrance Day on Jakku, the site of the last great battle of the Galactic War! It's just been two years since the First Order was defeated, nobody's tired yet of celebrating our victory. This is going to be huge, and there's no local competition. Can you believe this place doesn't even have a proper hotel? There's a hotel ship parked at the edge of the Outpost now, 100 luxury quarters, 20 of them with a view. Not that there's much to view here…"
Rey nodded. "I know. I saw the ads. They called it a patriotic adventure cruise."
Remembrance Day started bright and early with speeches at the Starship Graveyard. Bleachers had been rammed into the ever-shifting sand, and the angry spires of a withered Star Destroyer made the perfect scenic background for the live Holonet broadcast.
Rey took her seat among the other guests of honor, she bowed her head in humble gratitude when she was announced as representative of the Jedi Order, and kept her face Jedi-solemn as she listened to effusive speeches about defiance and perseverance.
She couldn't help thinking that the people who girthed themselves now with Jakku's survivor spirit knew nothing of hardships. They hadn't fought. Most of the ones who fought had died, and the survivors knew better than to call the final battle a day of joy.
Ever since she had stepped back onto Jakku sand, Rey had been caught up in a bubble; it felt like there was a layer of cotton wool between her and the rest of the world. Everything felt numbed and far away, strangely softened in a surreal way she couldn't name.
It wasn't until she left the stands, until she saw him, that her cocoon of softness was torn away.
Sharp, cold anger flooded Rey as she elbowed her way past senators and celebrities. He wasn't even looking her way, though he must have sensed her. She grasped his arm, hauled him around, still half expecting that she would look into a stranger's face.
It was a stranger's face, but it was also his.
He was no longer sallow-pale from forever hiding behind a mask, and he sported a beard as black as his hair, which he wore longer now, well beyond anything the First Order would have considered acceptable. His clothes were sand-colored, and at first glance closer to her scavenger self's attire than what she wore now.
Rey bared her teeth at him, and repressed the urge to snarl.
"What are you doing here?"
His dark eyes regarded her with a cold disdain that made Rey curl her free hand into a fist at her side. "Attending the victory celebrations. Or if you're speaking of right now, being accosted by a pacifist."
A group of Mon Calamari squeezed past them, muttering angrily about people blocking the stairs.
Rey released Kylo Ren's arm, and stomped down the stairs, retreating to more sheltered dueling grounds underneath the stands.
He followed, just like she had expected he would; he had never shied away from conflict. But now as she observed him more closely, and a little calmer, she could see how tense he looked beneath the loudly exuded arrogance.
She took note of it, yet she felt no sympathy stir within her. If she tried she could remember that she had almost been fond of him once, for a while. But that had been then, and this was now, and after everything, he shouldn't be here.
Her chin rose higher. "How does it feel to celebrate your defeat?"
"I changed sides. You should know, scavenger. I saved you more than once."
She frowned, and crossed her arms. "You changed sides just as the First Order started to lose the war."
"I returned to the light," he gritted out, yet she could see familiar old anger spark in his eyes. It was not unlike the anger she had witnessed when they dueled on Starkiller, and later, when he fought side by side with her.
Rey's gaze was steady. "It doesn't undo what you did before." She tried to remain calm, be the Jedi that he wasn't, be the better person. Yet his anger called out to hers, and fanned it. Her hands curled into fists again. She dug her nails into her palms till it hurt.
They had always clashed loudly, and fiercely; fighting on the same side hadn't changed that. Yet somehow, Rey realized now, she was surprised that peace and his legislative obstacle course hadn't cooled his fury. She had been sure he would be worn down, if nothing else. To discover that he wasn't sent a chill down her back, fear and thrill alike, and a reawakening curiosity she didn't wish to examine too closely.
"Nothing does. I spent the last two years being reminded of it."
Rey scowled, a sharp look the only response to any ploy for pity he might attempt.
"Why are you here?" she asked instead. He shouldn't be. He had no place being here, where they honored the fallen heroes of the Rebel Alliance and Resistance, the stalwart defenders of the Republic. He had defended it, too, but only after many other defenders had died at his hands. "There are probably relatives of people you killed here."
The anger came quick, too quick for Rey to do anything about it but wonder in hindsight if she had started to consider him someone she could let her guard down around. If she had, the obvious answer was maybe.
Here he was, too close, too angry, towering over her but not attacking, just the implied threat that he could.
Rey met his gaze, and stood her ground.
"Do you think I don't know that?" Kylo Ren hissed. "Do you think I don't see that everybody's looking at me like I'm a time bomb?" He was almost spitting the words at her, but he still wasn't attacking. "I was advised to be here." He let that sink in, and snorted. "Are you happy now, scavenger?"
"No." She forced her jaw to unclench. Her fists didn't. "But it's good enough for me."
"Good." He took a step back, and turned on his heel. He didn't wear fluttering black robes anymore, but it felt to Rey like he should. He was still moving with the grandiosity of someone who expected his robes to flutter melodramatically.
Rey watched him walk away, numb and confused, and now even more overwhelmed by this day than she had been before.
But…
"Wait." She waited for him to stop, and turn back to her. "I can't let you walk around on your own."
His lips curled back, showing too many teeth in something more than a snarl than a smirk. "Are you volunteering?"
She stiffened. No, was on her lips, of course not.
But who else, if not her? He was a free man, he had been invited to the festivities. She couldn't tell him to stay away, and she couldn't trust anyone else to handle it.
Besides, would it truly be so bad? It had been two years, and they'd worked together well, for a little while. Too well, almost, except he'd left, and he'd had the trials, and she'd had an Order to rebuild, and she had chosen to remember him for the enemy he once was.
Rey took a step towards him. "Yes."
She took to shadowing him from a distance, her eyes more on him than on the stalls he was browsing with excruciating thoroughness – just to spite her, she was sure. She doubted very much that he was truly planning to buy Battle of Jakku dishtowels.
It was late in the morning by the time there was another ceremony, this one right in Niima Outpost.
More speeches honoring the dead, speaking of the dead of Geonosis and Alderaan and the Squamatan homeworld, and so many more that the names started to blur together for Rey. The Hosnian system sounded like one tragedy among many in these speeches, and she appreciated it being framed as such. One more tragedy by one more cruel tyrant, it would be overcome like all the others.
They did not speak the name of Starkiller, or the man who had commanded it. Today was for remembering their own dead, enough history books would be written about the fallen enemy.
Rey's gaze kept straying to Kylo Ren, and wondered how he felt about this. On which side did he think his own name should be listed?
After the ceremony, Ren made his way back to the vendors, and Rey stifled a groan.
There wasn't anything else scheduled till the fireworks tonight, unless she wanted to socialize with politicians or Holonet sensations.
She sped up to reach him, stopping him with a firm, "Ren."
He did stop, but his face darkened. "I don't go by that name anymore."
Rey thought of telling him that she knew that, or that she didn't care, but it wasn't worth the debate. Not when she wanted something from him. "I'll go mad if I have to spend all day looking at toy X-Wings and fending off people trying to sell me genuine scavenger sightseeing tours."
"To be fair, they're also selling speeder races at Carbon Ridge."
She glared. It was all the response she needed to give.
He didn't seem cowed by it, though maybe a little bored. "You don't have to stay. Following me around was your choice."
Of course it was, and she didn't regret it. She had to keep an eye on him, both for the safety of others, and his own. Patriotic fervor ran hot today, and his face was well-known after the trials. Besides, he was a curiosity to her. Just a curiosity, mind you.
"Wouldn't you rather see the real Jakku?" She'd blurted it out before she could stop herself, and now she stood there, speechless at her own daring, and faintly mortified.
He opened his mouth, and Rey snapped, "Don't even start!"
Kylo's mouth snapped shut again, but he still looked smug. She didn't dare look beyond the smugness.
Rey turned her face away, and clenched her jaw.
"I would like to."
Her eyes flicked back to him, full of uncertainty, and now that she searched for it she was mollified to find the same hesitation lurking in the corner of his eyes, where his haughty façade couldn't cover it up.
Rey nodded firmly. "Alright. Let's do this before I come to my senses."
Their rented speeders made Rey's engineer heart bleed, but somehow the battered old things took them safely to the far end of the Graveyard.
"I'm reasonably sure they'll make it all the way back, too," she said, dismissing Kylo's grumbling with a shrug. "Or else we walk."
It wasn't that simple. The desert was dangerous, even thirst and starvation aside, but she would be damned if she admitted to any concern. Besides, she'd survived worse, and she was wholly capable of fixing a speeder, but she was in no mood to argue with Kylo Ren.
Rey started walking towards the towering ship half sticking out of the sand. It was an imperial ship, but one of the Star Destroyers, one section torn off as if a giant had just grabbed the ship and ripped it off.
"We're deeper in the Starship Graveyard than I would go on a normal day," she explained, "but we had to go this far to get away from the tourists. Everything closer to town has been turned into an attraction."
Kylo looked grim as he sized up the wreckage of the ship. He didn't look smug anymore, Rey noted with satisfaction, and wondered how he would look if he were standing in front of a full-fledged Super Star Destroyer like the Ravager.
"So, what are we going to do? Climb it?" he scoffed.
Rey flashed him a shark-like smirk. "You guessed it, Ren." She threw him a tightly-wrapped bundle consisting of hooks and rope. "Catch!"
They entered the giant, rusting metal tomb and made their way ever deeper inside, occasionally climbing just like Rey had promised and threatened they would. Taking one obstacle at a time, it was hard to keep a complete map of the ship in your head, or even gauge how deep in or high up you were.
This was a danger Rey kept in mind. One she didn't think of so much was just how weak the structures had become in some places, and how these would be affected by the twice the usual weight.
One moment they were walking along the arching bridges of what had once been part of a secondary machine room, it would have been an impressive sight if they weren't wading through darkness, and she was reminiscing about the salvage you could find in places like this one. The next moment the floor gave way beneath them and they were falling into nothing.
Rey didn't even have time to curse the Empire and their love for building lethal chasms on their ships.
"The hooks!" she yelled while already aiming her grappling hook at the wall passing by far too fast.
Her magnetic hooks pierced the metal and held tight. Just a moment later she heard the impact of another set of grappling hooks. She yelled as her fall was yanked to an abrupt halt. Her body swung wildly, now aimed at the wall like a cannonball, and she grunted as she forced herself to shift so she would hit it feet first.
Pain shot through her, even with the Force softening the impact, and she looked up, her heart racing as she fretted whether the hooks would hold. Everything in here was rusting and falling apart, as their fall had proven, why not the walls.
"Ren! Kylo, are you okay?"
She moved her head, tried to catch sight of him in the light of the flashlight she wore on a headband, but wherever he was, he had to be well outside her sight. The beam of the flashlight barely reached three arms' length.
"Here!"
He sounded closer than she had dared hope, and when she peered down between her legs, she could make out another tiny beam of light.
"Are you hurt?" Her voice was harsher for the adrenaline coursing through her, her heart still racing. Rey pressed her forehead against the aged metal in front of her and focused on calming her breath.
"I'm fine."
That had come out grim enough that Rey figured the answer was yes. She gritted her teeth. "I'll climb down to meet you. Keep talking, I need to follow the sound of your voice."
There was silence, then an incredulous scoff that echoed through the emptiness around them. "Are you coming to rescue me, scavenger?"
"How many shipwrecks have you climbed?"
Nothing but silence answered her, and Rey kept her thought so to herself. She needed her breath to climb anyway. "Talk, Ren."
A while passed before Kylo's voice reached her through the darkness. "How did you do this all your life?"
"I tried not to fall."
"Then you've lost your touch."
Rust flaked off as she dug her nails into a handhold. "I could just leave you hanging."
"Shut up and climb, scavenger."
"I have a name, you know." Her voice was quieter now. She was close. He really hadn't fallen much farther than her. His reflexes were good.
She could have sworn she heard his breath catch. "Rey."
The beam of her flashlight merged with the beam of his, and Rey flashed him a toothy grin. "That's better, Ren." She half expected him to demand in turn that she call him Ben, but he just scowled, looking very embarrassed dangling from his ropes like a hapless black bat.
"Did you ever get your lightsaber back? I don't want to climb around blindly searching for a maintenance hatch, I'd rather cut my own way."
Below her, a blade ignited, but it wasn't the red one Rey had known him to use. This one was green. She pushed aside her annoyance at Master Luke for not telling her; they had to focus on more important things.
The green blade pierced the wall, and Rey ignited her own blue lightsaber, cutting her way downwards while he cut upwards. It was slow-going, the metal was thick and stubborn, and it didn't feel like her blade cut all the way through.
"This won't be like cutting a hole into a door," Rey said grimly. "Once we have cut a full circle we will have to yank it out… let's hope we aren't cutting into a solid block of metal."
Kylo cursed under his breath. "And you're saying that now?!"
Her lightsaber went dark, a moment later followed by his. "On three?"
She thrust her hand forward and tore at the metal, it wouldn't budge, but there was groaning and shrieking of metal as solid struts were being torn at. The wall trembled like it was fighting the violence, and she peered up, giving her grappling hooks a worried look.
Rey felt the moment when Kylo's strength joined hers. They tried to tear at the circle of metal they had cut out, but it held firm, too solidly connected to walls and struts.
After a while Kylo's presence fell away, and she opened her mouth to snap at him, only to realize he'd started to bend the lower end upwards. Not a bad idea. This time, she joined her strength to his.
The sounds of resistant metal rang in her ears, but they didn't stop. They panted and gritted their teeth, but they did not stop, not until they were rewarded by Kylo yelling, "there's a gap! I can see crawlspace!"
He started to squeeze into the hole while Rey was still climbing down to his level, and when she reached it he offered his hand to her.
Rey grasped his sweat-slick hand, and let herself be hauled into the maintenance tube. It was tiny, indeed, but it was horizontal, and she sank gratefully against the wall. Her body went slack, she hadn't even realized how tense she had been. She squeezed her eyes shut, and rubbed a hand over her face.
They were silent, just breathing, and sipping water, and enjoying the feeling of solid metal underneath them.
"Do you know the way back from here?" Kylo asked finally.
She shook her head. "Not right now, I need to see more before I can pinpoint our position. But we'll have to forge our own path." Rey grinned tiredly. "I did promise you the real Jakku. Welcome to scavenging. Nothing ever goes as planned."
By the time they got their first whiff of fresh air, it was shockingly cold. Rey wasn't even surprised to see them make it outside to darkness.
She turned to Kylo, her expression grim. He looked pale and exhausted in the beam of her flashlight, and she knew she wouldn't be looking any better. Getting to here had taken a lot out of them.
Making their way out had forced them to go upwards again, and now they were high in the air, standing on a torn-off section of the ship. It was nearly flat, like a platform. It was too dark to say if this was just a part of the ship design, or if the metal had been bent into this shape. Her flashlight was strong, but it didn't let her see far enough to do more than navigate her way.
She shook her head dismay. "There's no way we can safely climb down before dawn."
Kylo was already dangerously close to the edge, a carabiner in hand and looking for someplace to attach it. "Rappelling should be safe enough?"
"No. We can't even tell how high we are, or if our rope suffices. Do you want to spend the night dangling in the air, unable to get up or down?"
He stepped back from the edge. "Good point."
Rey sat down, and shook her secondary water flask. There was only about a third left, but it would last her till morning. She permitted herself a sip, and wiped her arm over her forehead. "Besides, it's not safe to travel by night."
Kylo sat down next to her. "We have the Force. We could beat whatever's out there."
"We could. But I don't seek fights."
"Jedi wisdom?"
She frowned. "Common sense."
"So. Then we stay the night."
"We stay," Rey echoed.
It was, she had to admit, not the worst place to spend a night in the desert. They were out of reach of most predators, relatively sheltered from the wind, and the sky was sprinkled with stars. She wasn't even in the worst company – not that she had any intention to tell Kylo Ren she thought so.
She peered at him from the corner of her eyes, noting that he looked lost in thoughts.
He had been a good ally in there, when she needed one. Just like he'd been a good ally in the last days of the war. Master Luke, Finn and she would have still done what they needed to do without his help, but they would have been less likely to make it out alive if he hadn't arranged for Snoke to be alone when they faced him.
Even three against one, the fight had nearly cost them everything. If they'd had to fight the Knights on top of that… She didn't want to think of the odds.
"Should I apologize that you're missing the party?" Rey asked. It was mostly a joke, but who could say if he wouldn't rather be at a party with people who hated him than here with her.
Kylo snorted. "No."
She waited, content to enjoy the silence of the desert night, or wait for him to speak. She'd always been good at waiting.
"Remembrance Day was always huge for us in my childhood," Kylo said after a while. His voice was quiet, hushed. "We would remember Alderaan, and all the other worlds the Empire laid waste to."
Rey pressed her lips together. She wouldn't ask how he could have worshipped Darth Vader after that, how an Organa in all but name could have joined a man who would do to the Hosnian system what Palpatine had done to Alderaan.
These questions had been asked and debated and asked again for all the length of his trial. It had been a trial of his character as much as of his crimes, such as public trials often were.
Rey hadn't watched the broadcasts. She knew everything she needed to know about Kylo Ren, and the trial would tell her nothing new about Ben Solo. Her time had been better spent building her future than dwelling on his past.
"My mother would tell stories about her… my grandparents."
She turned her head to him. "I don't know a lot about Alderaan, beyond how it was destroyed."
"Most people don't." He shifted, tucked his legs close to his chest. "Did you know that an Alderaanian grass painter once planted hundreds of thousands of seeds from different flowers to create a giant flower painting of Emperor Palpatine? He went to see it himself with his entire retinue. But when he looked at it, black lilies created ugly wrinkles all over the Emperor's face. He was so angry he placed a bounty on the artist, but the Empire never caught him."
Even after having seen so much green in the galaxy, Rey still found it hard to picture meadows so great and wide you could turn nature itself into your canvas. The story made her smile anyway. "I wish they would tell stories like that at the celebrations."
"They do, on New Alderaan."
Rey nodded. If he wanted to celebrate this day at all, chances were he would rather do it on New Alderaan. She didn't think he wanted to celebrate it at all.
"I barely even knew Remembrance Day existed," she admitted, "I lived among the wrecks of the war and made a living from them, but nobody out here cared about the why and the how, or who won." She paused. "Well, I did. I had this doll of an X-Wing pilot. I pretended she was my friend, and we went exploring together. I liked to pretend I was a rebel pilot, like her." She shrugged. "But the New Republic was far away. In a place like Jakku, it's all the same if it's one government or another."
"I wish I could say the same."
"Do you really?" She pressed her lips together. "Does it really mean nothing to you?"
Her stomach clenched as she waited for his response, and she resented herself a little bit for caring so much. It shouldn't matter. But it did. She found herself tense with how much it mattered to her that he cared. She cared, she knew that much, and though she had accused him of being a turncoat of convenience, she realized now that she hoped it wasn't true. She wanted him to look at the things she looked at, and find them worth protecting, too.
He had once, she knew that. All talk of him changing to the winning side couldn't change the fact that he'd gambled with his life twice over. He'd switched late, sure, but not too late. And for a while Rey had wanted to let herself believe…
Lights shot into the sky and exploded into bright green stars.
"I still say fireworks are in bad taste, after the Hosnian system," Kylo muttered.
Rey's heart fell. That hadn't been an answer to anything.
The first firework was followed by a veritable bombardment of bright lights. They lit up Jakku's night sky in more colors than Rey could name, and more yet which were invisible to the human eye.
There would be a party in Niima Outpost right now, sentients oohing and aahing while they sipped their drinks and nibbled on delicacies from all over the galaxy.
If only Kylo had answered her, Rey would be glad to be here instead.
"It is in bad taste," she muttered, just because the silence was starting to feel oppressive.
He met her eyes, and they both started, quickly looking away again.
Rey fiddled with the hem of her Jedi robe. It felt heavy around her tonight. "So…" she started.
"So."
It had been easy as long as they kept busy, even if it was just arguing. Then they hadn't needed to think about themselves, and one another, and not even about how well they had worked together back there in the ship. She didn't need to think about how much she had liked it, working with him again.
"Why did you disappear for so long?" she asked. Her voice ended up a little quieter, a tad more hurt than she'd meant to let on. So much for pretending she didn't care.
"I didn't!" He stiffened, scowling at the fireworks. "You know what I was doing."
"The trial." Rey fiddled with her robe again. It had been too neatly hemmed for there to be any loose threads. Too bad, she could have used the distraction. "I know. But you vanished on… us."
"So?"
"So it should have mattered!" she snapped, shooting him a withering glare. "I thought…"
"You thought what, scavenger?" He sounded just as scornful as he had back in these days when they were reluctant, distrustful allies, and had constantly challenged another – half the time for no other reason than the joy they both took in measuring their mettle.
Or so Rey had thought, anyway. She'd thought it was something they shared. Apparently not, for Kylo Ren had disappeared on her as soon as the final battle was won, and Ben Solo had never bothered to grace her with his presence.
Her scowl darkened. "I thought…" She pressed her lips together. It wasn't too late yet to walk away. But she'd never liked walking away from her problems. Wait them out, yes, but she didn't run and hide, they would pursue you anyway.
She tilted her chin up, twisting around to face him like a duelist about to battle. "There was something, once. Between us." Rey bared her teeth at him, snapping before he could even dare to deny it, "And don't you dare say I made it up!"
"I am not the one who spent years pretending it didn't happen!" he snapped back.
There they stood, face to face, with the fireworks still going off in the distance – and when had they stood up? Rey couldn't remember, but she resented that he was taller than her. She had to look up to him, and it grated, though it would only ever be in a physical sense.
"Nothing happened!" But it could have. Maybe it should have. If their paths hadn't diverged, if she hadn't chosen to put him behind her and he hadn't done the same with her…
They stood nose to nose now, him slightly crouched, her all but on her tiptoes. Rey's hands curled into fists at her sides.
Kylo – Ben? No, he would always be Kylo Ren to her - met her glare unflinchingly and returned it. "Because you were afraid!"
Oh how dare he! How dare he? Rey gritted her teeth. After everything she had risked and sacrificed when she chose to trust him though she had no good reason to, after looking past every wrong he had done her and Finn and all the people whose names he had never bothered to learn. But she had taken the risk and given him her trust.
She had trusted, and she had cared - and now here she stood on the wreck of an imperial ship on Jakku and had to face the ugly truth that she had never stopped caring and he called her afraid.
"Watch me!"
Rey surged forward to cross what little distance remained between them and pressed her lips to his. It was hard and bruising, he snarled when he parted his lips for her, and his fingers tangled painfully into her hair. Rey yanked at his with equal fervor to pull him down, and didn't even care that she nearly unbalanced both of them.
Their first kiss tasted of stale water and Jakku sand. It struck her as strangely fitting.
Rey kissed harder and pressed herself closer, and gave a growl of her own when Kylo tried to seize control of their kiss. She bit his bottom lip and he pulled away, but he was laughing.
"I should have known you would bite."
She met his eyes, unflinching. He could bark and sneer all he liked, but he looked no less ruffled than she did, and he couldn't hide the heat in his eyes. A proud grin tugged at Rey's lips. "I do."
He looked furious, but she hadn't been frightened of him in a very long time and sure wasn't going to start now. His fury was aimless anyway, as proven when he just grumbled, and couldn't even muster any real spite for her.
Rey licked her lips. His eyes tracked her tongue. The corners of her mouth tugged upwards again. "Do you still think I'm afraid of us?"
The answer could very easily be yes. If she were smart it would be yes. She ought to be afraid.
"Fear is of the Dark Side," she reminded him when he didn't speak.
"And you are not."
"I'm not." Her bravado faltered. She let a heartbeat pass. Silence settled uncomfortably over them. "And neither are you now." It ended up sounding more like a question than a statement, Rey had to stifle a wince at that.
"Maybe not. But I could be."
There were a lot of things that could be. But here she stood, a Jedi victorious, her friends safe and her Order rebuilt.
"I won't be scared any longer of what could be. It's time we start living the life we fought for. That's how we should honor the dead, not with speeches and souvenirs."
He inhaled shakily. "I don't know…"
Rey took his hand in a firm grasp and plopped down on the warm hull of the ship. She tugged him down along with her.
"Shut up and watch the fireworks, Ren. They are for us, too."