I used to go on this site a lot as an angst-riddled teen. Now, I return! as an angst-riddled adult with real jobs and responsibilities, yet still with a love of fictional tortured antiheroes. Goddammit.
Anyway, this is a story that has been knocking around in my head since I saw The Force Awakens for the second time. Warning: contains spoilers for TFA (obviously) and in all likelihood some detailed injury/gore because I am a terrible human.
Chapter 1 - Abandonment
Kylo Ren lies in the snow staring up at the frosted pine branches and star-spattered darkness. The Sun is gone, used up by his own infernal machinations. His own body is exhausted too, both boiling up with internal heat and tinged with a coldness creeping along his extremities. His short huffed breaths mist and curdle in the chill air. That damn wookie's bowcaster shot has crumpled and melted his thin armour plates - the resulting congealed mess is restricting his lung capacity. It's probably more than that too, but despite the warmth he can feel trickling underneath his robes, Ren doesn't really want to find out. He knows he should move, stand up, warm up, get off this doomed disintegrating planet, if only to save his own sorry skin. He can't think beyond that; his thoughts are still chewing up the dreadful duel, the fierce eyes of the scavenger girl, the death - the murder - the execution of Han Solo.
What has he done?
The right thing. He corrects himself fiercely. His teeth are beginning to chatter.
Get up you idiot. He smacks himself once, hard, in the chest.Across the chasm ripped open by the death throes of the crippled planet, the thrumming sound of twin engines hums in the strangely quiet battlefield. Another damned rescue mission - NO! that scavenger girl is going to slip away from him, again. The pang of rage morphs into sudden jealousy, which turns to a fearful loneliness.
Where is my rescue mission?
He watches the lights of the Resistance ship and its exhaust plumes dwindle into the sky, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Ren can't quite yet muster the effort needed to stand. Blood slowly trickles down his mutilated face.
No one is coming for you, fool. They all hate you, they only obey you because they fear the Force.
A nearby groaning crack startles him, causes sweat to bead on his forehead in panic. The snow blanket he is lying on covers a thin skin of rock and metal, and the core of the planet is a hollow vacuum rapidly devouring its own flesh, and in a flurry of crumbling soil, the chasm yawns closer toward his boots. Ren does not need any further prompting. He staggers upright, wholly unprepared for the numbness of his limbs and the black cloud that hovers around his vision as he stands. The dent he has left in the snow, a wonky snow-Toydarian, is smeared with dark blood, but using the nearby tree trunks as both cover and as a crutch, he painfully makes it further away from the abyss and terror behind him. His leather gloves rasp against the rough bark and tree bristles as he lurches against them.
Come on Kylo.
He manages to make it away from the gorge, reeling and stumbling like he has been up all night drinking Mandallian Narcolethe. Which did occasionally happen - as the Leader of the Knights of Ren, he was accustomed to certain privileges, and the potent spirit had been surprisingly easy to come by on Starkiller Base. But like those horrible morning-after-the-night-befores, he is feeling distinctly confused, and more than a little nauseous. Every time he leans against a tree to rest, he feels the deep, earth-shattering tremors from the core of the planet reverberating up the wood. In the monochrome darkness, it is hard to make anything out, and he knows with a chilling certainty he is going in circles. Ren punches his side repeatedly in frustration. Blood spatters the snow.
Where the kriff did I leave my speeder?
After a few more minutes of laboured breathing and unsteady limping, his injured leg suddenly gives way and he collapses. Kylo Ren howls into the snow, face down and furious with himself. The wound, inflicted by the incompetent lightsaber-wielding of that smug deserter FN-2187, is thankfully cauterized, but has sunk deep. He needs a medic badly; his strength won't last forever and Supreme Leader Snoke has not yet formally taught him the ways of force healing. He doubts he would be much good at it anyway, it requires a deep level of meditation which he rarely achieved at the best of times during training sessions.
He attempts it anyway, despite only having the vaguest idea of what he is trying to accomplish. After the destruction of the old Empire and the scattering of the remaining Jedi Order, literature on force techniques is few and far between, but nonetheless there are still a few precious pages that he has gathered from remote planets and fixed into his memory. He focuses on them now, bringing the ancient words to the front of his mind.
Let it not be said that the Leader of the Knights of Ren goes down without a fight.
With his eyes closed and teeth gritted together, he concentrates on his pain and rage, as Snoke has taught him. And for a few brief moments of bliss, he is able to stand, and walk again, and his bones stop burning, and he is able to scramble onto some higher ground through sheer force of will. This will buy him some time. But his momentary calm wobbles as his boot slips on the bare rock and all his sensory systems crash back into his body. Ren screams. It is worse than before. Damaged ribs and saber wounds sear his flesh. The black fudging the edges of his vision has become a thick fog, and he can barely see anything.
There's no sun, that's why I can't see. I'm fine, just tired, and it's dark.
He knows he is lying to himself, even as an apprentice, he knows that using the Force like this has dire consequences. His face is back in the snow, tangled black hair fanned out like a ragged halo, and the soft freezing ice soothes the burning slash across his face. Kylo Ren knows he needs to get off this world. He tries to muster up some of his old temper, an outburst of white hot rage might warm him up a little. He wants to hit himself to spark some energy. But he can't even find the energy to lift his head out of the snowdrift.
It's not so bad. He is cold, cold, cold, and his strength is failing.
