You were sharp as a knife to get me.
You were a wolf in the night to fetch me back.
The wishes I've made are too vicious to tell.
Everyone knows I am going to hell…
And if it's true,
I'll go there with you.
When she hears the sound of frantic footsteps and panicked screaming, she knows he's found her.
For the first time in almost three years, she lets go of the thick mental shield that blocks her connection to the Force and lets its power wash over her. She takes a deep breath, taking a moment to revel in the sensation. Feeling the Force rushing through her veins again is like coming home after a long, wearying journey. Then, she feels the connection she's been hiding from for all these years. She feels him.
He's excited. Like a wolf in the night, a predator circling his prey, he approaches her little cabin in the small forest village. She won't escape this time, and they both know it. This is where it happens—the final encounter that will seal both of their fates.
She pulls the hood of her grey coat over her head and grabs her saberstaff from the sheath on her back. When she steps out into the night, Ren is already waiting for her. He stands in the middle of the village with half an army of Stormtroopers at his back. The aftertaste of fear hangs thick in the chilly air, but no blood seems to have been shed. The villagers are hiding in their cabins, safe—for now.
Relief spreads through her chest. The reason she's always dreaded this moment is not because of her inevitable battle with Kylo Ren. To be honest, she's been looking forward to it. She's been living on the run for such a long time, never settling down for long, always looking over her shoulder. The weariness has seeped deep into her bones, and she can barely remember the last time she had a good night's sleep. No, she's not afraid of battling Kylo Ren. Not anymore. What she truly fears is his way of handling problems—of handling anything, really—and how it always ends with casualties.
"So this is where you decided to spend your days," Kylo Ren says, his mechanical voice full of disgust. "Living among primitive creatures on a desolate planet, denying your gift. Denying everything I taught you. Such a waste."
In the distance, she hears the faint sounds of a small child crying. She swallows hard. The first year or so she lived alone in deserts and swamps, just to make sure that the day Kylo Ren did come for her, no one would get caught in the crossfire. As time passed, the loneliness in her heart grew heavier and heavier. She got careless. She's stayed in this village for far too long, and if she doesn't do something, her kind and generous neighbors will pay the price.
Kylo Ren walks towards her, his steps slow and menacing. "You must have known I would never stop looking for you, Rey."
"I know. Just like you must know that I'll never stop running." Her heart pounds in her chest, but she manages to flash him a smirk. "And I was always faster than you."
Before he can answer her, she dashes into the thick forest surrounding the village. As expected, she soon hears his heavy footsteps following her. She feels him in the corner of her consciousness, predicting all her twists and turns, copying her every move. Losing him will be impossible, she knows, but if this rabbit chase brings him far away from the innocent villagers, that's good enough for her.
Soon, she feels a shockwave of power rush toward her, and before she can react on it she's pushed chest first into a tree. She tries to move, but her body is locked firmly in place by an invisible force. Ren's favorite trick.
"Did you really think you could outrun me?" Ren bellows. She hears the soft thud of something being thrown to the ground, and when he speaks again, his voice is no longer modulated by the filter in his mask. "I'm disappointed, Rey. I never taught you to run and hide. I taught you to fight."
She snorts. "I knew how to fight long before you took me in. You taught me how to be a killer."
His heavy footsteps approach her, and she struggles helplessly against his Force hold. Her face is pressed against the rough bark of the pine tree. She hates showing him her back like this, but she knows he won't strike when she's helpless. She's never been sure about how he truly feels for her, but she knows that in his own way, he does respect her.
A locked cell. A hard bunk. An aching, swelling bruise on the back of her head. Her heart began to race. She'd been captured again.
"You're awake."
Leaning against the cell door, she found a helmetless Kylo Ren. She could sense his smugness, just like she always felt vague traces of his emotions. Something had gone terribly wrong during her first capture, and ever since then, a part of her mind seemed to be linked to Kylo Ren's. Judging by the ease he'd found her on Ahch-To, the bond went both ways.
"You could have killed me," she said, carefully observing him. "Why didn't you?"
He smiled at her—and for some reason, the expression terrified her even more than all of his scowls combined. "You need a teacher. I still want to show you the ways of the Force."
For a moment, she just stared at him. She took in the gruesome scar splitting his face in two, and she could tell by the way he moved that his right shoulder still wasn't fully healed. She'd wrecked him and left him to die, yet he still wanted to be her teacher. Was it arrogance or just plain idiocy? She honestly couldn't tell.
She hesitated. He was a monster, but he knew about the Force. He could teach her the things Master Luke had refused to even touch. If she let him teach her his tricks, she would have the unique skills to take him down one day. It would give her the tools to end this despicable connection between them once and for all.
She tilted her head to the side and gave him a cryptic smile. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."
His chest presses against her back. She feels the warmth of his body, and his smell is so nostalgically familiar she almost forgets how to breathe for a moment. He wraps his arms around her waist, burying his nose in the crook of her neck. His hands caress her body, gentle yet firm, and she bites back a moan. The Force is no longer holding her immobile, but she still can't bring herself to move. Her body remembers him. Her soul remembers him. There was a time when she thought she belonged in the arms of this monstrous man, and a part of her still thinks that's true. She's missed him. She's missed him so much it physically pains her to have him near her again.
"Come back to me," he whispers, his voice hot in her ear. "It's time for you to stop running. You belong by my side and you know it." His warm breath dances against the sensitive skin on her neck. "I can feel it, Rey. You still want me."
Hot, possessive kisses, threatening to swallow her whole. A muscular body, so much larger than hers, holding her down.
"You want me," he said, trailing harsh kisses down her neck. "Tell me you want me."
Rey didn't say anything. She knew that if she opened her mouth, all that would come out would be pitiful moans.
"Rey." His voice took on a threatening tone. "If you don't tell me what you want, I'm not giving you anything."
Their eyes met. His pupils were blown wide with desire, and he was radiating a hunger so intense it almost scared her. Her body trembled with need. Of course she wanted him. She'd wanted him ever since their minds bonded in the interrogation room, and it had only gotten worse since she became his apprentice. He wasn't a good man, she knew, but it didn't matter. She wanted him anyway.
Ren waited patiently, staring her down with the eyes of a wolf. He loved having this power over her. She rarely gave in to him in the training room and had yet to call him 'Master', but every time he got her naked and trembling like this, she always ended up giving him anything he wanted. He had her under his spell, and she wanted him too much to care about it.
"Please," she gasped. "I don't care what you do, just . . . just touch me."
And, as always, he did.
"I'm not coming with you," she says through gritted teeth. "Nothing you say will change that."
"I gave you the power you deserve. I would have given you anything." His voice lowers. "We were invincible together. The universe was at our fingertips."
She clenches her fists. "You still don't understand, do you? Power like that was never supposed to belong to two singular people. We grew too powerful, Ren, and you couldn't handle it." She swallows hard. "We couldn't handle it."
Kylo Ren's former master lied lifeless on the stone floor, his heart pierced by a red lightsaber and a blue saberstaff. They'd done it. They'd finally put an end to Supreme Lord Snoke's reign of terror. Rey fell to her knees. It was finally done. The root of all the evil in the First Order had been slain. Now, they could use his power for good. They would fix what the First Order had broken, and let peace rule the galaxy instead of war. It was all she'd ever wanted, yet something about it left a sour aftertaste in her mouth.
Ren walked over to her, clasped her hands in his and pulled her up against him. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead before capturing her mouth with his lips. He tasted like fire and victory and blood.
"I could never have done this without you," he murmured. "You and I will rule this sad excuse of an empire. We'll unite the galaxy under one flag, and after that, we'll finish what my grandfather started. We'll bring balance to the Force."
Her stomach twisted. There was something mad glowing in his dark eyes, and her guts kept telling her that this was a mistake. Giving him this power—giving them both this power—was a mistake.
When they left the assembly chamber, they found themselves surrounded by the last fraction of Snoke's little army. Stormtroopers. First Order officers. Civilians. Men and women, old and young, all staring in fear at the Master of the Knights of Ren and his dark-clad apprentice.
She pulled her staff from the sheath on her back, and heard the whimpering of a young child coming from somewhere far away. She hesitated.
"Finish them," Ren said. "To end this war, you need to finish them. Do it, Rey. For me."
And she did.
His grip around her waist tightens. "We could change the world, Rey. We could make it better."
She turns around in his arms, leaning back against the tree. Her heart aches as she looks upon his face for the first time in years. There are fine lines surrounding his eyes and lips, and his pale skin looks almost translucent. The look of hunger, of badly restrained madness, still resides in his dark gaze. He's changed, yet he hasn't changed at all.
"This is why I had to leave. We wouldn't just have changed the world. We would have destroyed it." She juts out her chin. "We were monsters together. I'm never coming back to you."
"I'm not leaving without you, Rey." His voice is low and threatening, and she can tell he's running out of patience.
She meets his eyes without hesitation. "Then I guess you won't be leaving at all."
He blinks in surprise. Even now, he sees himself as a wolf chasing down his prey. He keeps forgetting that she's no innocent little lamb anymore—that he turned her into a predator, a wolf with a bloodlust matching his. She's no one's prey. She's a monster, just like him.
With one powerful thrust, she pushes him away from her and ignites the ends of her saberstaff.
"I told you, didn't I?" she pants. "I told you what would happen if you tried to follow me."
"'If I ever see you around, I'll leave with your head, Master.' I recall it. It's the last thing you said to me before running away." He calls forth the rugged red blade of his lightsaber and spins it around. "Confident words for a coward."
She rushes toward him, channeling all her conflicting emotions before swinging her staff through the air. Ren blocks it at the last second and counters, slashing wildly with his saber in the general direction of her body. She blocks some of his swings, but some of them leave smoking, stinging cuts on her torso.
"I may be a coward, but I still meant every word," she says, moving forward despite her aching wounds. "I didn't hide because I was afraid of you. I hid because I knew that if you ever found me, I was going to have to kill you."
"And you don't want that, do you? You don't want to kill me."
Their eyes meet for a moment, and she can't hide her emotions about what's to come. No, of course she doesn't want to kill him. He's Ren. Her Ren. The man who cared for her when no one else did. The man who loved her like no one else had.
Her eyes well up with tears. No, she doesn't want to kill him—but she has to. There's darkness in him she simply can't fix, and he brings out something equally dark and horrendous in her. They're terrifying together. As long as they coexist, the world will never be safe.
Suddenly, he's all over her. His heavy body crashes into hers and she falls to the ground, her back hitting the leaf-covered soil. He pins her hands over her head, forcing her wrists to the ground with a single hand. His free hand grabs her chin, locking her face in place. There's nowhere for her to look but straight at him. She looks him in the eye and cringes. There's so much madness in him, more than she's ever seen before.
"I'm not leaving this place without you," he breathes, clenching her wrists hard enough to bruise. "You ruined me, Rey. Corrupted me. You made me wish I'd never laid eyes on you." The hand on her chin wanders downwards until it encircles her neck, squeezing it slightly. "I won't let you leave again. I can't. You belong with me." The pressure on her throat increases, just like the madness radiating from his eyes. "You're mine, and I'm taking you back."
The pressure disappears from her throat and wrists. Before she can take a deep a deep breath, his hands are in her hair, and his lips crash into hers. She gasps into his mouth and he deepens the kiss, nearly smothering her with his desperation. He tugs her head back, his grip rough yet perfectly controlled, causing as much pleasure as it causes pain. Her traitorous body sings with happiness. Three long years have passed since they last kissed like this. Three long years since she last felt complete.
It would be easy to just fall right back under his spell—so easy to follow her body's demands and give in to the nagging urges of their shared bond. But then she remembers the blood that stains her hands because of him, the pain she's caused because of him, the endless list of people she's killed because of him, and she finally gains the strength to do what has to be done. She grabs her saberstaff from the ground and plunges the burning edge into his chest. It's a bad angle, but he taught her well. The blade goes straight through his ribcage and pierces his heart.
He pulls back, his mouth forming a surprised, "Oh". His chest burns—she feels it as if she's stabbed herself as well. It hurts. Her eyes blur with tears. It hurts more than she thought it would.
He rolls over on his back. His breathing is shallow, and his already pale face is losing its last trace of color. The Force tries to heal the wound as his heart struggles to beat, but they both know it's too late. He's already fading.
A faint smile tugs at his lips. "I suppose this means . . . there's nothing more for me . . . to teach you." He coughs up blood, staining his lips with red. A groan of pain escapes from somewhere deep down his throat, but when he stares up at her, his eyes shine with pride. "The perfect apprentice. Completing the circle."
She laughs bitterly. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."
He reaches up and gently caresses her cheek. She lays her hand on top of his and leans into his touch. He's dying. She can't feel it deep in her soul. The space within her where Kylo Ren is supposed to be is slowly turning dark and empty. It's like a part of her is being ripped away, leaving an aching, bleeding wound in its place. A wound she knows will never heal.
Tears roll down her cheeks, and she can't hold back a sob as she desperately clings to his hand. "I loved you."
He smiles and closes his eyes. "I know."
And if I see you 'round like a ghost in my town, you liar,
I'll leave with your head. Oh, I'll leave you for dead, sire.
Song inspiration: The Wolf, Phildel.