Author's Notes: Reylo, in the style of Gothic romance. Yep, my new ship is a hero/villain one. The best way I can explain it is this: From the moment Kylo, scarred by his grandfather's lightsaber, looked across a chasm at Rey like she held the power of every universe and every galaxy ever created in her palm and wanted to drown in it, in her? I was doomed. Anyway. Here's a Gothic romance for you all. Features religious crisis, temptation, violence/blood/gore, and general dark vibes. And lots of angst. But that should be expected of me by now.
I hope you enjoy what I'm doing with this, and please feel free, if you wish, to leave a review/bookmark/favourite.
Have mercy on me, God
According to your great kindness
And according to the multitude of your mercies,
Erase my iniquities
Wash me completely from my iniquities
And cleanse me of my sins
For I know my iniquities
And my sins are always before me
To you alone, I have sinned.
~ Have Mercy on Me, God (Miserere mei, Deus)
Tonight, he drowns as strange faces surround him. Strange, new faces with his destiny wrapped around their necks. The water cools his face, his body. Hands grasp his neck and bring him up. Through wet eyelashes, he tilts his chin up and breathes. The son of God stands before him. Forever encased in death, a death Christ had endured to save the sins of his people.
(Stay, Ben. Please. Just… stay.)
The water comes again.
Fires light the way of the narrow windowless corridor. A maid with plump cheeks and yellow hair pauses to let him pass, stepping to the side and bowing her head. A heavy door stands at the end of the corridor. Two braziers reflect their flame against the grey stone. The iron handle gives with a heavy clunk. The door swings open. A plain crucifix stands at an altar. Thin arched windows let in streaks of moonlight, caged by painted glass. One carries the picture of the mother of Christ, holding God's child in her arms with tranquillity in her frozen eyes.
He kneels before the picture of God's son and crosses his fingers down his forehead, across his shoulders.
"Kylo Ren." He raises his head at the calling. The door closes. Footsteps, a shift of cloth indicates movement. "Rise, face me. I must speak with you."
Ren obeys. The bishop stands in the shadows before him. His thin, frail hands link. A flash of white at his neck as he raises his chin.
"You," the bishop begins, "have been reborn tonight. Your teachings will begin in earnest from tomorrow."
"I understand," Ren says softly. He bows his head.
"You understand that your life before must not be spoken of? If you are to become closer to God, you must be prepared to—"
"I am prepared," Ren says, a snap in his immediately reply. The bishop gives no reprimand. (We can fix this, Ben. Fix you.) Ren lowers his head. "My previous life," he says with calm, "is nothing to me."
"Your place here is not secure, Ren." The bishop steps forward. The costs of his belief lie in his face. A scar lines the left side, from cheek to temple. Sores pepper the corner of his mouth. His skin is waxy, eyes sunken. "If you wish to keep it, you must keep to your studies," the bishop orders, his tone gentle in his explanation. "Can I be assured of your dedication?"
"You can," Kylo replies. He will hold onto his place here. Here is his destiny. Here is his safety. No-one will be able to take it from him. The bishop gives a single nod.
"Then kneel with me, Kylo. And let us pray."
Seven years later
Every night, she drowns. Her lungs tighten, water pressurised inside her body, filling her up until her heart is barely able to catch breath, her cries muffled by waves. Her limbs are useless, making slow movements through the heavy current, still and yet forever moving. Her scream bubbles from her mouth. The bells peal. More water in her lungs. More pressure. Up through the water, there is sunlight. All too bright and unreachable. She fumbles for it, tries to stretch up. She falls, further, further.
Her legs kick out. She changes, breaths coming out of her in bubbles as she pushes her arms forward in a circle, taking the weight and pulling it underneath her. She is bigger now, bigger than this water. So big she could swim anywhere, any place, any time. Through the waves a woman in silk stands on a bridge. The silk is blue as the water. Her hair is as black as the night. Her smile is the sunlight.
The bells still peal. A high note, calling for worship. Rey flips her hood over her face, ducking left into a narrow alleyway. Her satchel bangs on her leg. She hugs it close.
Along the alleyway, a crush of a crowd browses the stalls. The scent of street food fills her belly. The bitterness of hot-eels, the heat of soup, the sweet citrus scent of oranges. To her right a ladle scrapes the bottom of a large pot, serving out the last portion of eel jelly. Rey pauses, watches, her nose trembling with a sniff. A red-cheeked mother serves; a little girl with ringlets presents. Lawyers and thieves mix in one crowd. Rich gentlemen, sampling the taste of poverty, barely miss their wallets. Rey's stomach rumbles. One of the rich gentlemen raises an eyebrow at her. He waves a grey glove vaguely in her direction. "Off with you," he sniffs. She moves. His wallet is already slipped inside her satchel. The stale scent of smoke and the hot scent of mulled wine streams from the pubs further on down their street. Their signs clamour together among the white sky. She finds her favourite. A chimney sweep on his way, with a cocky look and his brush tilted against his shoulder. In the picture, he stands before a familiar countryside. A blurred mix of earthy green and muddy brown underneath a blue sky. (Blue silk. A sunlit smile.)
"Merry Christmas," call passers-by to one another, carrying gifts and wreaths wrapped in holly, the plant's red berries surrounded by evergreen leaves. Rey jumps into a thicker portion of the crowd as a groundsman shouts over the high volume of the crowd. He and three others carry the tree, tall and wide, through the narrow alleyway. The richer complain. The poor bow their heads. The tree's branches brush over the ground, exposing the cold stone cobbles from the layer of white snow, needles of green left behind.
The green of the abandoned needles leaves the path. Rich gentlemen fade quickly as she gets closer, turning a corner into the Devil's Acre. The snow becomes water. The water becomes mud, sloshed with sewage. From her left, she hears moans and grunts. Glancing, she sees a worker, muddy boots left at the door. His bare feet curl against the stone floor as he pumps into a prostitute. His fingers hold her hips. The curls of her long hair bounce on her bare breasts. She moans for him, clutching the pieces of bronze in her palm. At the last moment, her eyes open. They are silver like a crown coin, peppered with white and circled by black. She grins, briefly. It distorts into a grimace as the worker completes, giving a final groan.
A pub, ramshackle but not yet collapsed, stands at the end of the long street. More exchanges are made in doorless doorways. Children sleep as their mothers fuck sailors and workers, all of them clinging onto pieces of bronze and silver. At the end of the street, there is a small forked lake, stagnant now but once flowing. Beyond the narrow lake, there stands it stands. A mermaid's body is painted on the hanging sign, her face scratched out. (The story varies.) Rusted letters, nailed to stone, spell out the pub's name. She knows the first letter. 'S'. Rey walks the bridge's path. Its stones curve steeply upwards over the narrow river. A drunk lies at its end, slumped down among the mud and sewage, hugging a bottle of gin.
Inside the pub, there's the stench of jellied eel. An elderly woman serves bowls of it to the customers. By an antique piano, someone sings a jaunty song, though their eyes constantly move, searching the place. Rey holds her satchel tighter as she slips through the crowd. Men with scruff on their chins, scars on their knuckles, dirt on their clothes, glance at her but pay her no heed. One sat at the bar scuffs his fingertips against her backside. "Pound and sixpence," she snaps, and his impulse leaves him. He calls her a rip-off. She slides and dodges more bodies until she comes to the back door. It is old, waterlogged, and she has to kick it to open it. It creaks open. One of the barmaids sneaks round to close it behind her.
Overhead, floors of houses and rooms jut out, creating a low roof. Thin gaps let in blue moonlight. A flurry of fat snowflakes has arrived now. Rey pulls down her hood. Some of the snowflakes catch in her hair and her clothes, on her cheeks. Most find the mud. They don't land. She tugs her woollen strand from her wrist. She tucks it between her lips, pulling her hair back into a bun. Shifting her satchel so it sits at the low of her back, she opens another door.
It is a room, long abandoned but always paid for. Yellowed pages of newspapers tell old stories. A fireplace carries ash and embers of a long-extinguished fire. Rainwater drips and forms into webbed lines over the floor. Bending her head, Rey slips into the fireplace's hearth. The chimney is just wide enough for a grown man. A tall wooden ladder stands propped up against the coal-thick walls. Stepping onto the first rung, she begins to climb.
Distant conversation spurs her towards the top. Reaching up, her fingers clenched into a fist, she knocks twice. Pauses. Knocks once again. The trap door opens to the bright fire light of a lamp. The holder of it smiles at the leather strap on her shoulder.
"'ope you've been productive," he says, his accent thick. "Some of us haven't been so recently, and boss ain't 'appy. Me? Came back wiv' two wallets of very wealfy gentl'men, if I do say so miself, and he clocked me one, right on this ear. 'Spose I deserved it – two wallets ain't no good result of two day's 'ard labour, now is it?"
Rey doesn't reply, climbing further out of the trap door. The distant conversation grows louder as she crawls into the back room's space. Blankets and rejected artefacts, broken fakes, ripped portraits, torn cushions, fill the small space. Flea sets down the lamp before her, his wiry form struggling to shut and lock the trap door. Rey hurries to slip off her boots, opening the lamp and placing her feet before it. Closing her eyes, she rubs the hard skin of her heel.
"Enuff of tha'," barks Flea. He snatches the lamp from Rey, snapping the door shut. "You can warm you'self once boss 'as seen wha' you got."
Rey slips on her boots and follows. Flea walks with a limp. His face is gnarled with the effort of it. His clothes are cast-offs from the wealth of London. Silks brought in from Italy, cotton brought from India. Of an evening, he'll boast of it, show off his new clothes to thieves and sleep with a knife glittering with Asian jewels. Everyone knows the story of Flea's first kill. He had slit a man's throat three inches deep to keep a sheepskin. In the main room, thieves of all colour and creed sit. The females count their money, and know not to ask for more. The males sit and eat from a cooking pot. The young ones run among the high beams, swinging and shouting for attention from their friends. The Catholic, a solitary figure, kisses the golden crucifix around his neck as if it were a Bible and worships in prayer underneath a patch of moonlight, repeating words foreign to Rey's ear. Flea leads her to the bed.
Uriah Plutt, by choice, never leaves his bed. His legs mottled, his stomach always full, his mouth puckered with sores and lesions, sweat finds his brow even in winter. A lamp, hanging over the centre of the bed, lights him in harsh yellow. Opulent bedsheets cover him, sheets patterned with pictures of a nature she's never seen. Expensive clothes dress him. Heavy velvet curtains at the four posts of his bed isolate him. His grey teeth are exposed in a snarl as she and Flea approach.
"What do you want?" he says to Flea, his voice a permanent gravelling growl.
"The girl," Flea explains, soon leaving them.
"At last."
Rey steps closer at his beckoning and reaches for her satchel. She sets it on the bed at his gesturing, and brings out her haul. Two silver candlesticks, a necklace of true pearls, gold coins, wallets, a collection of unbreakable rubies and emeralds. An old man had owned the candlesticks. Lighting them, he had peered into the dark and called out before deciding it was nothing, and heading up to bed. A socialite had owned the pearls. From a lover, she had assumed them a fake and abandoned them in a jewellery box. A dying elderly woman had owned the rubies and emeralds.
"How long have you been away from us?" Plutt asks, his eyes looking over the jewels.
"Two months," Rey replies. "I worked as a maid."
Plutt's gaze sweeps back to her. "For how many people?"
"Three. The wallets and coins were pickpocketed."
Plutt shifts upwards to sit. His hands, spotted and pink like sausage skin, slither and slide over her goods. The rubies and emeralds slip out of his reach. He clutches onto the pearl necklace. "I haven't seen one of these for a long while," he muses, and Rey's heart brushes against hope. She stands a little straighter. Her attention remains on Plutt. He picks up the candlesticks next. His thumb strokes the detailing and he searches for the stamp. Finding it, he puts the candlesticks to one side. He glances over the wallets and the coins.
"You have earned me—" He sucks his teeth. "Ten pounds. I expect twenty pounds next time. My courtesy will not be so kind."
Rey turns away. Approaching the cauldron, she dumps her empty satchel by her feet and picks up a metal bowl. The men, including Flea, eye her. Clasping the ladle, she spoons two helpings into the bowl. The smell of pea finds her nostrils. The tendrils of steam warm her face. Beyond dirty cracked windows, the snow falls thick and fast.
One of the men stares at her with examination. He is wiry like Flea, but his face is drawn, his cheekbones sharpened by hunger. A spiky red beard covers his jaw. He tilts the bowl against his lips, drinking the last dregs.
Rey blows softly on the thin soup. In the liquid, her reflection wobbles and weaves. Her brown eyes blink back at her. Her wide mouth is turned down, a frown tilted between her brows. She isn't pretty, like the barman in the pub, the women she passes in the Devil's Acre. She remembers the woman with the crown-coloured eyes, grey and dappled with flecks of white. How she had smiled, her fist tightened around a tuppence. A shiver trembles against Rey's spine.
"She didn't fight," she admits, in answer to the silent question. She takes the first swallow of her soup. She wipes her mouth with her forefinger and thumb. "The jewels belonged to an old woman. She gave them to me."
Jackbone's drawn face twitches in disbelief. He brings out a loaf of hard bread from his satchel. It's circular in its shape, dusted with flour. Two gashes line its top. Jackbone's fingertips are dusted white as he rips a piece from it. He rips that piece into four. Speckles of flour dance towards the creaking floor. He sets the loaf beside the cauldron. Rey takes a second swallow of the soup, cooling rapidly in the winter air. The snow still falls.
As she takes the last of her soup, she watches Jackbone's yellowed teeth mash and gnarl at the hard bread. She folds her lips hard together. Jackbone laughs with his eyes roaming her. Bread spits out of his mouth, landing on her clothes. They are patchwork, her clothes, not like Flea's. Hers are built, built from stolen cloth and cotton, sewn together in candlelight by a woman who was kind with eyes almost black and who called her "little babe". Baggy trousers that end underneath her knee, a stolen leather belt clasped around her waist. An unboned corset around her waist with a loose shirt underneath. Old rags wrapped around her fingers and palms and wrists, a decision made in the middle of winter. She had stolen her cloak from a socialite, a woman of fashion who never noticed its absence.
Jackbone laughs again. Rey stands and walks away. Feeling the bowl still in her hands, she lets it drop to the floor with a clatter. She finds her bed in her cloak, which she sets over flat and torn cushions in a corner of the back room. She squeezes her eyes shut. Later, when Jackbone finds her and makes silent demands of her body with his hands, she acquiesces.
In her sleep, she drowns again.
The snow has become rain. His fingers trace words as he speaks the prayer, his palm holding his Bible. His prayer echoes, a soft whisper, against the image of the Morning Chapel before him. The son of God stands before his mother, divinity and wisdom in the calm. Closing his Bible, Kylo stands. The acrid scent of smoke briefly fills the air. The warmth of the candle flame encompasses it, extinguishing it. He sets the candle before the altar, among the rows of other lit flames, and bows his head.
"Father Ren." He turns. A student approaches him, scrawny in build. "There is a person outside," the student explains. "They want to have their confession heard."
"Have they wronged me?"
The student blinks. "Father?"
"Confession may only be heard by the wronged party. Have they wronged me?"
"No, Father. But - she's… she's dying."
"I won't hear it."
Leaving the altar of the Morning Chapel, he treads the familiar path of the north aisle. His home is familiar to him now. The long wide path of the nave that leads to the high dome threaded with gold and painted with images of God's word. The golden pipes of the great organ and the carvings of the quire. Beyond that, the high altar where the son of God takes on the sins of his people with mourners at his feet. The white marble altar will be marked by the grey of the rain.
Passing over the main floor, Kylo comes to the dean's staircase, a winding spiral of yellow stone. The students find it intimidating, staring at its geometric shape with open mouths and whispered wonder. Thunder rumbles, distantly. A creak makes him pause. Kylo turns.
The door to the cathedral inches open.
A white face with hollow eyes stares at him. She is a creature of poverty. A cloak hides a stained petticoat. Her feet are bare, her steps unsteady. A golden crucifix lies between her formed breasts. She weeps. "Please…" she begs. "Please…"
"Father Ren, I'm sorry, I didn't realise—" the student begins, but the woman's weep becomes a cough, halting the apology. She staggers closer. Fixed to his spot, Kylo watches her with a degree of fascination. A Catholic, begging to be heard by someone not of her creed. She lifts a trembling hand to her mouth. It moves to her wild, loose black hair, trailing against unwashed tangles. The pus of a putrid sore bleeds in a trail down her pale arm.
She is close enough now that he can see her eyes. They're a faint gold, growing fainter. Her cracked lips form a word. Her pain rips through the word in another cry. Her knees buckle. Her feet slip out from underneath her. She collapses and hits the floor with a thud.
Blood pools from her skull. A metallic tang floods his nostrils. The red is black, soaking the curls of her hair, threading against the marble floor. Glossy red hangs from the corner of her mouth. A moment where everything is frozen. The blood drips down the line of her jaw. It nears her temple and the empty circles of gold. A lightning bolt strikes beyond the walls of the church.
The student flees through the cathedral door, pale and retching. Stained glass reds, blues, gold and silver cover the creature's lifeless body. Above her, angels spread their wings wide.