His blood slides down his cheek bone onto the snow and runs through it, changing its colour forever. It steams, too hot in the cold. He struggles to sit up again, the pain is making him sweat in the ice, the pain is clouding his eyes, his mind, and he weeps, and he aches, and he is deaf and he is blind. He just cannot fight. He falls back to the ground. He does not know how long it will be until he is searched for and found, and he cannot stand the pain, the chaos. He closes in eyes, heavy with tears, in a desperate need to find peace, and he can find nothing but one strange thing. He cannot dwell on why he needs it now; he is perplexed and angry at himself for it, but he just has to take himself back to that place (in her head).
And so he closes his eyes and he imagines an ocean – and he can see the island. He stills, and he is quiet.
"No," Luke Skywalker says.
Rey blinks at him, the wind roaring in her ears, her outstretched hand trembling. "No?"
"I will not train you."
She swallows down a heavy slab of disappointment and fear. She is so confused, elated, rejected, that its flavour is nothing, it is tepid and tasteless. Luke Skywalker's eyes are everything she imagined, the colour of a heavenly, early morning blue sky, holding the lustre of sunlight and the secrets of space – the colour of hope and mystery.
She panics, and she nods to the lightsaber in her hand. "It called to me," she explains, "it felt it, it –"
"The Jedi are silent now," Luke interjects, and she feels his loss, she feels he is loveless, motionless, disconnected, his Force is the withered, severed roots of a great tree –a dead life source.
"But, does that not mean something?" she begs, and she hears her voice shaking. "It calls to me, it came to me!"
"It does not mean anything to me, anymore." Luke answers her, and he raises a hand. "The path to the Light, to the Jedi, I cannot help anyone find their way. Not even you."
What does that mean? Rey can feel the bitter sting of tears, and she can swear she still feels the sands of Jakku in her eyes, in her tears, sore, full of grit, those sandy tears. She can never wash that away – her tears will always be full of sand, and perhaps that is what Luke Skywalker is telling her, in revealing this, in breaking her heart, in waking her from the dream she is in, the dream that she is, and could be, a hero, and not a gutter skulk Jakku junker.
"There is not enough Light," he finishes, "not here."
She tries to focus her thoughts on the Light, on the Force, hoping he can feel it, feel her fight and her goodness –she thinks of Finn's laughter, her awe in seeing sunlight dappling on the surface of water the first time, her painful, starved stomach as she gave her only quarter portion to a hungry child, she thinks of stroking Chewbacca's magnificently heavy and soft head as he cried the night Han died, she thinks of her desire to be good and be strong and whole. But it does nothing. She drops her arm and clenches her teeth. Luke feels nothing. She hisses, "Please."
He gazes at her.
"Please," she repeats. "Han Solo is dead. The First Order are – I – the Resistance –they are losing hope. This lightsaber called to me, the Force called to me – please – that means something. I know it."
Luke is steadily becoming, to her eyes, less wise and less beautiful and more dry and fragile and rough. He is becoming sand.
"You are strong," he says quietly.
Rey finds the confidence and need to answer, "Yes."
"Then keep the lightsaber," he tells her, "and I wish you the best. It may mean something, but it does not mean anything to me, and it cannot."
"How can you be so defeated," she starts, grinding her teeth, "when you haven't even attempted to fight?"
She grunts and she stubbornly attempts to hold in her tears, but it does not work. He doesn't answer. She looks at him one last time, drinks in his tired, empty face, those glorious eyes, and then turns and runs.
Leia's eyes, opaque, determined, search her face in confusion. Rey is covered in translucent red blotches from crying, and then tears will not stop, they cascade all over her, drown her, fill up her ears, fill up her mouth with salt – and she knows it is the taste of the ocean, and she tries to imagine the ocean, and she tries to see the island, but she just can't.
Leia is gripping her shoulders, and her gentle, lined hands somehow feel like the talons of a great bird. She is such a huntress, and Rey wishes so much to be like her, quietly powerful, and not this, not this.
"Why?" she asks intently, and Rey shakes her head, tightening and baring her teeth.
"I don't know!" she bawls. "He wouldn't come back, he wouldn't train me, he has gone again. How will I ever learn, now?" She is asking herself rather than Leia, but Leia answers her with a kind, soothing hand against her cheek.
Rey succumbs to it, the feeling is like cool water over a burn, it is medicinal, it is pure relief – she has longed so much to be touched this way, with tenderness, with care. She has never known it. Nobody has ever tried to calm her tears. She is angry. She thinks of Han, of the curling twist of resentment in the pit of her stomach as she watched him die, and watched him place a hand on his face, on Kylo Ren's face. It was a gesture of such deep, complete, limitless love that even as the death reached Han's eyes it did not falter for one moment – and she wonders why it is that she can be forever rejected and alone, and Kylo Ren, bathed in and drinking and dripping the blood of children, and his family, can be loved unmitigated until and beyond the day that he dies.
She closes her eyes and tries to focus on Leia's hand, but it's all breaking apart – she has no way to learn, to grow, to love, to help. She has never gained and then lost so much. She looks at Leia, and she knows that she does not belong here. She did not cry on Jakku – she slept restlessly, ate sparingly and bled excessively, but she did not cry, and she hates to cry.
She mews and then rips her face away, and Leia steps back, surprised.
"I am going home," she announces. Chewbacca protests, but she ignores it.
"Rey – " Leia begins, but Rey shakes her head and glares.
"I am not meant for this," she says, Leia reaches out for her, but Rey snatches herself away. She begins striding to an A-9 Vigilance Interceptor (she won't take the Falcon), and Chewbecca is pleading with her, and Poe is staring after her, seemingly destroyed.
"You can convince him, Rey," Leia calls after her. "He is stubborn, but you must find a way – you will. I know you will."
"Just stop – just stop!" Rey booms, her hands flying into the air as she begins running.
"What about Finn?" Poe pushes. They have to shout now, she is almost gone. Rey ignores this too, because Finn will be fine, and Finn will know they have little hope now that Luke Skywalker is lost to them – they fought and suffered for nothing, ultimately, and if it were the case Finn was always the first to admit when fighting was futile. She finally understands him. He had not been a coward before, he had been sensible, and she had been naive. She is not anymore.
"Let her go," Leia orders. And Rey takes it as an affirmation of what she had felt – she spends so long fighting for others, but none of them ever really fight for her, especially when she wants them to.
The lightsaber is in her pocket, and it feels warmer than before, heavier than before, but she will not pay it a second thought. She will not think of it again, despite how something whispers to her, earnest and intimate, over and over, you must take these steps alone; you can take these steps alone.
Powerful and vulnerable and alone on Jakku for months, the First Order finally begins their first attempt to retrieve her. He remembers her thoughts, particularly the childhood ones he had taken – and he sees her, praying, howling, her eyes and the sky full of stars that were dying. There is nothing here for her, he thinks to himself, as he steps out into the brittle sandy winds of the Town. They have no intelligence about Luke Skywalker's whereabouts – they know only that he is gone, that Rey is alone on her home planet, and apparently, the Resistance have offered her no protection.
He knows she will fight, and he is sure she is Luke Skywalker's padawan, and so he greatly anticipates this. It drives him to mad excitement. He will relish this fight with her – principally as Luke Skywalker's padawan – and he will relish his victory. He will relish feeling her strength, and he will further relish feeling her weakness. His heart is pounding so hard his eyes blur, and a seismic wave of awe rolls over him when he feels the first shot fired connect with a body, with a heartbeat – and stop it. He will never understand the strange loss and exhilaration that gives. The sky is full of red lights, and his fingers become slippery in his gloves. He is sweating with concentration, searching for that slightly familiar – ah –
She is hiding, he realises, and she is afraid. He feels her through the Force, her heart beating like the wings of a humming bird, burning and twisting and thrumming. Yes, he thinks. She is not focused enough at all to feel him seeking her out, he knows this. He goes to that place – she is out in the dunes alone, hiding in the belly of a broken AT-AT half eroded by sand. He feels her pulling him, almost, and he lets her, he goes to her.
He sees her, and she does not have her lightsaber (his birthright). She is cowering. This isn't what he wanted. He had imagined this fight with her lusciously muscular and her Force tantalizingly, painfully Light and bright; he had wanted her stronger, dangerous. But this is not what he sees – she is cowering. Mucus sits quivering and shimmering on her upper lip. He wonders briefly why this is, but then he sees her eyes, and she stands up suddenly, and he shivers at the pure head rush this gives him. Now is the time. He starts running, his lightsaber buzzing to life, and he twirls it, feeling the weight and the heat – he is ready for this, yes, he is so ready – she's running away, and he sees Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber in her hand. She unsheathes it and turns and begins running backwards, watching him, petrified. He Force runs – and he has caught her, and – no – this isn't enough. She shouts, "No!"
He lets out an angry growl and focuses his strength, channelling the Force through his outstretched hand to her joints, her knees, her elbows, her shoulders, and she cannot move. Her eyes are wild, wild and wide and apple green. She splutters as she tries to cry out. He holds her there, grinning behind his mask, and peels of his gloves, before throwing his helmet down into the sand. He will make sure he feels this with all of his senses; he wants to learn the scent of her blood and feel its warmth. She will pay for the shame and humiliation she caused him – it had almost cost him his rank, his honour, his Apprenticeship to the Supreme Leader. He is inwardly seething that despite this he cannot kill her, as these are his orders – no hatred or anger will ever entice him into disobedience. And so, he will at least make this take as long as it can.
Their eyes meet for a long, long moment. He watches her intently, and he releases her throat so that she can speak. The sand skitters against his boots and cloak as it moves through the wind. Strangely, she does not speak.
He raises an eyebrow. "Admiring your handiwork?" He knows she is running her gaze over the huge, thick, gnarly scar running from the right corner of his mouth to his left temple. She simply stands, panting.
"You feel weak," he states. "Why is that?"
She does not reply.
"Answer me," he demands.
She says, staring at his scar, "I am admiring, yes. I'm glad Force healing isn't a Dark side discipline."
"Alright," he says. He will take it from her, then, if she won't answer. He raises his hand to focus the Force, but she is still trying to push him away. He can't quite –
"I like that you have to wear my victories on your face, Kylo Ren," she hisses, "I like that now, you can never forget how–"
She is taunting him and he will not take this again and he just wants to fight her and show her and so he releases her completely and swings forward with his lightsaber – she only just blocks it, she is so weak, he turns and swings again – she ducks, and starts running. He finds himself baring his teeth with strings of saliva running down his chin as he bellows, "You had no victory!"
He channels the Force to her head, to her eyes, and strains as he pushes as much pain and power into her as he can. She topples and falls, crying out, unbalanced and in agony, and he runs at her – and then kicks as hard as he possibly can in the jaw. Blood shoots out of her nose and she spits some into the sand, choking on it. He lifts her up again, by her hair, and then throws her down, she cries out – she can hardly fight, and as she begins to run and stand she makes an attempt to strike him. He blocks, and then uses his whole weight to press down on her. And now he is not tired and injured, and he is nearly a Sith Lord, he is almost there, and he is pushing her own lightsaber down, down, onto the flesh of her throat, and tears begin streaming out of her eyes and he can feel the pulsating, crackling heat of their lightsabers, the point that they join is sparking and warm and turning a dazzling shade of violet.
He pushes down, harder, and he is clenching and baring his teeth with the pure desire to have his moment with this girl, to show her. Her blood oozes down her chin and fizzes as the moisture touches the lightsaber in her hand. "You had no victory," he snarls, "you have nothing, and you know nothing, and you are nothing!"
Her eyes flutter as the lightsaber softly brushes, and burns, her skin. She does not make a sound, and he admires this control. He pushes down harder and a fresh well of blood starts bubbling up, boiled by the heat of the lightsaber and by the heat of the fight, and he laps at his lips and swallows. He can smell burnt hair – in the wind her hair is loose and it sways into the crossed blades, sizzling into ash. He has had enough, he raises his other hand (she does not have the strength to push up anymore) and punches her in the abdomen, driving his fist up to her sternum, and she whines and falls down. The blood has dried brown in the sand. She coughs. He looks down at her and exhales and inhales thickly, still bursting with life.
He kneels down next to her. "Yes," he says softly when she glares at him, just able to move. "I am admiring."
Her breath wheezes through her lungs and he watches her struggle for a few more moments, and then focuses on dark, dreamless sleep, and taps her forehead with his index finger, sending it to her. Her eyes close.
A/N: I am Reylo trash. Dont even care! Hope everyone enjoys this – it's a slow burner but I promise it'll be worth it. Please leave any feedback! May the motherfucking force be with us all.