Chapter One
The Fly in the Ointment
The king Kylo strode through the palace hallway, his guards straightened and saluted as he walked past. His polished leather shoes echoed against the marble.
The evening had turned out to be an incredibly dull affair, a simple gathering to commemorate the day he took the crown. All he found himself in was a sea of nobility full of well-wishers, rivals and social climbers. Although it was a small escape from the worry of rebels it was nothing Kylo didn't experience every day of the year. If that was how it was, then he would rather read in the sanctuary of his study.
Kylo's hand reached out to touch the golden handle to the room, pausing when he heard the distinct sound of rustling. The king frowned, he silently gestured some of his men to come behind him. He knew with certainty that no one was supposed to be there save for cleaning staff, early in the morning. Kylo swung the door open.
In the darkness of the study, stood a masked figure at the edge of his desk. The light from the hallway made their goggles gave off an eerie glint. Crumpled in their thick gloved hand were his papers.
"Those belong to me." Kylo snarled in an authoritative tone. His guards held their guns, not daring to act without a direct order from him.
The figure looked at him and his guards. Slowly they began to back away, quickly realising that they were outnumbered. When their left hand brushed against his glass bottle of expensive brandy, the figure quickly swung it towards Kylo's head.
Swiftly the king stepped to the side allowing the bottle to shatter against the hallway wall. Furious, Kylo quickly stepped towards the intruder forcing them to back away into the glass doors that led to the balcony.
The figure managed to pry open the balcony doors, only slightly delaying their inevitable fate of being trapped by the balcony itself. They backed up until their backs pressed up against the stone railing.
Kylo flicked his eyes to the guard, who in turn radioed the other guards on the ground floor. He spoke loudly. "There is nowhere to run, surrender now."
His guards had their eager fingers on their triggers of their guns. The masked person stayed still as a statue for only a moment before they did something the king did not expect.
The masked figure quite quickly threw themselves off of the balcony. A wave of shock and disbelief engulfed the king and his guards. One of his guards radioed the ground floor again.
In slight shock, Kylo leant over the stone balcony fully expecting to see the figure's body splattered against the palace garden's grass. Instead, he found the masked intruder expertly clinging to one of the gargoyles that hung below the balcony.
The figure in a rather taunting manner flipped the king off as they scaled down the palace wall. In a distorted, modified voice they cried out. "Fuck you!"
Charming. Kylo watched the figure scale down with a straight face until their feet reached the ground. Since they were alerted, his palace guards on the ground floor had quickly surrounded them. A devious smirk grew on the king's face.
He turned his head to his guards. "Tell Phasma, I want them alive."
The evening was proving rather interesting after all, as Kylo swiftly left the study area his dark eyes caught the sight of the pool of alcohol on the floor. Making a rather pitiful sticky mess, the shards of broken glass glinting underneath the light.
"Have the staff clean this up," Kylo ordered his guards and murmured under his breath. "That was some expensive brandy that they wasted."
By the time Kylo approached the ground floor, the masked figure had been apprehended their hands firmly handcuffed behind their back as they kneeled. The guards held out their rifle, daring the person to try and escape only easing up when their king arrived. They would never dare act out of order with his presence.
"Sir," Guard captain Phasma patiently handed him papers. Her face emotionless.
The palace guards stood aside for him, their backs completely straight. Kylo took the papers which were of locations of his military bases. Clearly, the intruder worked for the Resistance, this would greatly benefit them most of all.
Kylo let the papers hover above the intruder's head before callously ripping them above with one slow agonising tear. He could always get them back, they couldn't.
"DIE! DIE! YOU SCUMBAG!" the intruder in sudden ignited fury exploded, making some of his guards flinch at the volume of their distorted voice. One of the guards came behind to wrestle them back to their knees. "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE YOU EVIL MONSTER! WITH EVERY BREATH IN MY BEING, I WILL END YOUR REIGN!"
"Monster?" Kylo raised his eyebrows crossing his arms, unaffected by their fury. "You and your Rebellion keep trying to kill me and I'm the monster? I want peace for Naboo."
The intruder snorted bitterly. "Liar. You ascended the throne by using lies and deceit! The Rebellion sees you for what you really are!"
Kylo glared at the masked intruder making them freeze. "You know nothing of what I am." He crouched down to their level, staring into their goggled eyes. "Your Rebellion forgets that Naboo had seen war long before I entered the fray. The Rebellion say they want peace, yet they still send people to die for their dirty work. The say they want mercy but they keep sending children to fight in their war. You call yourselves Rebels, I call you terrorists."
The king knew that he had hit a nerve.
"I spit at you, you rat bastard." The person lowly hissed, no longer looking him in the eye.
Kylo frowned as he noticed there was an odd pitch to their modified voice that he couldn't put his finger on. They certainly had an accent but the tone sounded strange. As he reached over to rip off the mask, the intruder shrunk away, losing courage. A deafening boom made the young king stop in his tracks.
He swivelled around to see thick smoke rising from the back of his palace, where the ballroom was. The sound of screams of his party goers could be distantly heard from where they were standing. Kylo's snapped his head to face Phasma. "Find out what's going on."
Kylo gave a particularly hard stare at the masked intruder and then told the guard hovering back them. "Watch them, I want them to stay alive for questioning."
He swiftly followed his guard to see the extent of damage the Rebellion had done to his palace.
Rey stared up at the smoke rising from the back of the palace. A sure sign that the Rebellion had heard the king on her radio.
'Traitorous, disgusting, despicable scum-bastard!' She raged to herself glaring at the king's retreating back. Rey wished that her mask didn't completely cover her face so she could spit at that creature. How dare he look and speak to her in such a way!
She could feel that the guard behind her was eyeing her warily. His boot poked at her lower back, almost daring her to try and run. Rey heard the distant screams of people, guilt felt like ice in her stomach. Sincerely she hoped that no innocent was harmed in the crossfire, even if it did seem unlikely.
After a very long time of heavy silence, the thunderous roar of an accelerating engine blared out in the night air. Rey could hear the distant sound of confused guards shouting then shots being fired.
The guard next to her became on edge, hand on the rifle's trigger.
With a sudden crash, the armoured vehicle of the Rebellion ripped through the metal fence. With a screech, the wheels tore through the grass and sped directly towards her location. That was her cue.
"Wha—What the fu-?" Rey didn't allow the guard to finish his sentence as she gave a rough headbutt directly in the man's crotch.
With the wind firmly knocked out of the man, Rey managed to stumble to her feet. The guard coughed and spluttered. The vehicle rotated sharply so that the back doors could swing open for her. She sprinted towards the back of the vehicle, arms of the Rebels reaching out for her.
Before her foot stepped onto the vehicle, a bullet whizzed past her head. One of the Rebels bellowed a piercing screech as they clamped onto their arm. Rey felt her arms being roughly yanked inside the vehicle, two rebels snapped the back doors shut.
"GO! GO! GO!" Poe screamed at the driver.
The wheels screeched as the driver drove away, an unbearable silence fell on the Rebels save for the faded sound of shots hitting the edge of their armoured vehicle. Violent, jolts of the journey made Rey feel very sick.
"Here," Poe his voice soft gently removed her mask and retrieved a lockpick from his sleeve to undo her handcuffs.
Rey shot a guilty look at the rebel who was shot, his arm was bleeding heavily.
"Don't worry love," the man mumbled through a wince, his hand uneasily trying to pressurise the wound. "I've been shot at before, this won't be my last time."
"Did you retrieve the information?" Poe asked Rey, his voice quiet perhaps knowing the answer already.
"If that bastard didn't come up to the study, I would've done," Rey mumbled angrily.
The Rebels shared a disappointed glance among one another.
"Your father is going to be pissed." Poe bluntly muttered, looking away when Rey shot him a glare.
The brightest light in the war room of the Rebellion's base hung above a table that displayed a map of Naboo, forcing the rest of the room to look rather dim. Tiny blue and red pins were embedded all over the map.
Rey felt the eyes of the general Jyn Erso and her father commander Dayne Kenobi stare at her. She stood to attention like the soldier that she was. She held her hands behind her back while her eyes fixated on a spot on the wall far behind Dayne's head.
"What happened?" Dayne asked his voice low and tense.
Rey urged her voice not to waver. "The king came in the study far too early."
Dayne's piercing blue eyes bored into her face. "And the locations?"
"...The king tore them up in front of me," Rey's eyes flickered downwards.
"Damn it!" Dayne's fist smashed the war table, facing away from his daughter. "You had one. Simple. Task. And you failed." He didn't even try and hide his rage.
"Sir." Jyn's clipped through his rage induced rant. Her tone disapproving. "The failure is shared among her team, they should've contacted her as soon as our agent in the ballroom realised that the king was gone."
Dayne turned around with his arms crossed looking unimpressed. "Speaking of which, if my agents hadn't planted those bombs in the ballroom, a bullet would have been in your brain by now. At the very least our people weren't harmed."
Rey's cheeks burned with humiliation, looking directly at the stone floor. She could hear Jyn exhale in an annoyed manner.
"What's worse is that the king knows what exactly our mission was!" Dayne let out an angry frustrated sigh. He turned his head away from his daughter. "Go to your quarters, so I can think what to do with you."
Rey did not need to be asked again, briskly striding to her room fighting the tears from spilling. Ignoring everyone she walked past.
Rey's musty pillow was still wet from her tears, despite it being a while since she stopped sobbing. Her cheeks still burned with embarrassment. Both at her failure and her father's treatment of her. Wiping her face she fished out the picture she kept underneath her pillow.
The picture showed an incredibly young Rey, being held up by her mother. Her fingers brushed against the photograph. During times like these, she desperately missed her.
Although her father despised talking about his deceased wife, during the rare occasion the topic arose his voice always softened. He'd be kinder. Once he admitted that his wife brought out the best in him.
Rey wished that he would talk about her more, for it had been so many years since her mother died that her memory was beginning to fade. She remembered certain things, like her laugh and the flowery smell of her hair. But other things, like the sound of her voice or stories about how her parents met, were beginning to wane.
A sharp knock on her door broke her thoughts. Quickly Rey shoved the photograph back underneath her pillow as she sat on her bed.
"Hey," Poe had a soft tone. "Are you okay?"
"Of course I am," Rey firmly said, not quite meeting her friend's eyes.
Poe leant on the door frame frowning. "I sure as hell wouldn't be. I don't care how old I get, if my father spoke to me like that, I'd be upset."
Rey felt touched by Poe's concern, a small smile faintly appeared on her lips. "Well...I'm not you."
Poe seemed happy to gain a smile. Even though he wasn't entirely convinced by her lie. "So...have they told you your next task yet?"
A frustrated sigh left Rey's lips. "I'll probably be stuck at the base, doing repairs. Or worse latrine duty."
"Your father wouldn't do that...it wasn't even your fault," Poe mumbled unconvincingly.
Rey shot him a look of disbelief. "He would totally do that. The great commander would do that to anyone else on his team."
Poe looked like he disagreed and deep down so did Rey. For her father would not have been so harsh to any other person in the Rebellion. Just her.
Only a single clack against the stone ground from a walking cane indicated the arrival of Jyn as she came behind Poe. The general had suffered supreme damage from a bomb explosion many years before. Forcing her to rely on a black cane for the lack of motor skills on her left leg.
"Poe you're meant to be in your quarters now," Jyn stated, her green eyes stared into Poe's brown ones. A ghost of a smirk played on the older woman's lips. "Go before anyone else sees you."
The young man flashed a grateful grin at his general, silently giving Rey a look of farewell.
Jyn did not speak until Poe left. Her green eyes gave Rey a soft look. "Your father has given you a mission."
"So why isn't he telling me?" Rey asked raising her eyebrows.
The general openly shot the young girl a grin. "Because I'm the one who suggested it...and you're working with me for once."
Working with the Jyn Erso? To work with a Rebel hero was a true honour, a small smile briefly appeared on Rey's lips. "Okay!" she said perhaps a bit too eagerly. "What's the mission?"
"You and I are going to go undercover," Jyn said looking rather pleased with herself.
It had been two weeks since Rey's failed mission. Of all the places Rey thought that she would be, she did not think it would be in the palace again.
She tried not to look suspicious by keeping her gaze low. She was surprised that the palace staff allowed her and Jyn in even when the general told her not to worry. The fear that the guards would instinctively know that she and Jyn were part of the Rebellion strongly gnawed at her gut.
It became apparent that Jyn personally knew the housekeeper, the older woman's stern expression melted into fondness upon recognising her.
"Oh how wonderful to see you again Lyra!" the housekeeper expressed with a smile. "You have no idea what a lovely surprise it was to hear from you again,"
Jyn or Lyra Steel had written a letter expressing a desire for her and her 'daughter' to work as palace staff. Like she had done in the old days.
"Thank you for finding us work, Meera," Jyn said in a grateful tone.
The housekeeper patted Jyn's hand that rested on her cane. "Oh, it's the least I can do for a newly made widow my dear friend."
Showing off her incredible acting skills, Jyn's green eyes became watery and gaze slightly avoided the housekeeper. She mumbled an incredibly soft. "Maker rest his soul,"
A mournful silence descended between the three.
Perhaps trying to alleviate the mood, the housekeeper clasped her wrinkled hand on Rey's face. "Oh doesn't she so look like you Lyra!"
Jyn smiled a proud smile. "She certainly does," Proud because she realised quite early on, that her supposed child needed a keen resemblance to her. As a result, Jyn was quite insistent on Rey going on this mission.
Rey could see it, Jyn had brunette hair laced with silver streaks and their face shapes were similar even if they weren't related.
For three months Rey had to try and gather intelligence by pretending to be a servant. Servants are invisible to nobility, Jyn said. Servants had access to rooms that were otherwise barred from others. Though the general had to work in the kitchens because of her leg and cane. Thereby relying heavily on Rey.
The housekeeper gave a confused frown. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name dear?"
"Kira," Rey quietly mumbled.
"Well follow me and I will fetch you your uniforms," the housekeeper chirpily said.
Rey repeated the last words that her father told her in her head. 'Don't fuck this up.'
A/N: Please tell me what you think.
There's going a lot of Grey vs Grey morality in this story. Neither Kylo's or the Rebellion's side is going to be completely in the right. We'll see why Rey despises the king so much in the next chapter.
I kind of wanted to do a story where Jyn Erso pretends to be Rey's mother because I heard a theory that Jyn was Rey's mother before the film Rogue One was released. While I didn't think it was true, I kinda saw why some people might think that.
The name Lyra Steel comes from two related people to Jyn's life. Lyra Erso her mother and Steela Gerrera (Saw's sister).