A/N: Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback on Chapter 1—it really means the world! To the reviewer who suggested that I keep on using Paradise Lost quotes, challenge accepted! :D I stumbled upon the last one by accident, but now I've got good reason to dust off my old copy of PL and dig in properly. In this chapter the pieces are still moving into place, but I got impatient and had to get our kids together a bit, even if only in a Force-Skype kind of way. If you enjoy, please let me know; it makes the writing go faster! 3
"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell."
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 2
Rey stands against the back wall of the Falcon's cargo bay. Today she is no Jedi hero, just another observer. There are twenty-eight in total left to bear witness. It's all that remains from Holdo's sacrifice, and before that the assault on Starkiller Base. The losses are difficult to comprehend.
With the last scraps of the Resistance gathered together, Leia relays her plan. She appears unaffected. Loss is a part of her, Rey thinks, something deeper than a collection of experiences. It saturates down to her marrow, as if the Force imprinted her with the genetics of tragedy.
Thinking about the General's family brings an unwelcome ache to Rey's chest. Lucky for her, Leia knows how to command attention.
"Running is not enough," she says. "We must rebuild. But carefully. The First Order is strong and they know we are nearly wiped out. Their instinct will be to hunt us. We must do better than run." She pauses. "We must disappear."
A confused murmur erupts, quickly extinguished by rains of calm, and Rey wonders if Leia is even aware of the extent that she uses the Force. The room is silent again as Leia proceeds to explain.
She and Poe are to leave in search of allies. There are those she has not called on for help in a long time, but certain friends remain loyal, if somewhat discreet in their allegiances. She asks Chewbacca to keep the engineers and other technical staff safe; the droids, as well. They can lay low on his home planet of Kashyyyk, whose dense forests are ideal for sheltering the small band of survivors. The Millennium Falcon is to be abandoned where they stand. Chewie makes a short, regretful growl. Rey shares his sentiment, though she cannot deny the wisdom.
Finn and Rose have been chosen to shore up support at the grassroots level, to light as many sparks as they can. Who has a grudge against the First Order? Who can be swayed from whatever tenuous hold they have? It is slow and dangerous work. Leia says she understands if they wish to lay low as well, but Finn interrupts her before she can finish. "I won't let you down." Rose stands proudly beside him, and Rey is left to wonder what she has missed in the brief time they have been apart.
As for Rey, Leia says she is a prime target of the new Supreme Leader and thus must go into hiding. It's a Force thing, she says with no further explanation. Rey looks away from all the curious stares, embarrassed. She feels like an anomaly, not the mystical creature who incited awe as she raised huge boulders from the ground. Now she is a danger, a liability. The Force has cursed her to live apart from everyone else.
This had been the burden Luke had fled from, the crushing weight Ben Solo could scarcely carry without fracturing the soul within. Now it is Rey's turn. She does not relish what lies ahead, like being abandoned as scrap back on Jakku, but the fear of Ben finding her instead?
"Rey? Are you okay with this?"
She nods at Finn and gives a weak smile. It hurts to pretend, to move her mouth the small amount. Finn glares, unconvinced. There will be a conversation later. Another painful goodbye.
For now, she follows Leia down the narrow corridor that leads to the cockpit.
"What is it?" Leia says, impatient to start her new mission.
"I can go with you."
"No."
"You need protection."
"Not as much as you."
"I can handle myself," Rey says. "I can handle your son. Please let me help you."
She remembers a different plea, a desperate please with outstretched hand and soft mouth (how his lips had trembled and Rey had pressed her own mouth tight together, decision clear in her mind).
"You'd be taking a huge risk."
"It makes no difference wherever I am."
"And what about the risk to myself?"
Rey feels the frustration of half a portion earned for a ten-portion haul. She blinks slowly and breathes. "I'll go mad if I can't be useful."
Leia weighs the options. She makes her decision: "My kind of girl," and she smiles.
Finn paces the deserted cargo bay, the rest of the Resistance busy outside as they prepare the other transporters. "It isn't fair," he says, "I only just have you back."
It isn't fair, Rey knows, that she avoided him until there was so little time left. I can be a coward, she thinks. Hiding and pretending to wait for something she knows will never happen. Finn looks at her with a determined expression, resigned as well but no longer with fear. There is sadness, and the Force lets her feel it. She feels Rose close by, though they have not exchanged words.
"I know but—"
"Can he hurt you? Does he…?" Finn throws his arms up, waves his hands at the sides of his head. It's not a Force trick Rey is familiar with. "I don't get how all this works."
"What do you mean?"
"Kylo Ren."
All Finn remembers is the black-cloaked monster who stabbed his father through the heart and ripped Finn's spine wide open. Not what Rey knows, and she is jealous of how easy it must be to hate the nightmare visage. But she has seen its skin.
"He can't hurt me. He already tried that once." She fakes another smile and feels her face tear apart.
"I can't believe—"
"It's going to be okay."
"If I never get to see you again," Finn nods as if to assure himself, "It'll be okay as long as I know you're safe."
"Ssh," Rey says. "Please." (How she hates that word.) "I'll miss you," and she hugs her only friend.
Finn's arms are the kindest things she has ever felt around her. "You too."
"Go save the Resistance," she says and she hears his laugh, feels his warmth as he hugs her tighter.
Over his shoulder, Rey sees Rose watch them, and she whispers in his ear, "Keep her close."
"Who?" Finn says.
Clueless idiot, she thinks. She lets him go, and he walks away, reluctant, until he backs up into Rose.
Rey watches the hapless and endearing interaction, the same bittersweet taste in her mouth as when she'd seen Finn tend to the unconscious girl. Now Rose is recovered, and she smiles when he sees her. She holds his hand and says something to him; then Rose is approaching Rey.
"Hello," Rey says.
"Hey." Rose twists a crescent-shaped medallion that nestles in the neckline of her overalls. "I know we've not met properly yet and this is probably the worst time but I really need to ask you something…" She clenches her jaw and forces herself to hold Rey's gaze. "Are you and Finn…?" She shrugs with shoulders and eyebrows. Rey doesn't understand.
"Are we…?"
"You know…"
Rey really doesn't.
Poor Rose presses on. "Are you with him?" She leans forward and says, her voice dropping low, "Like a couple?"
"Oh. No, it's nothing like that." Rey smiles, and it is genuine now; she has met another who loves her friend. "I'm just so glad I got to meet you."
"You are?"
"Of course." She leans closer too and says in the same soft murmur, "You'll take care of him, won't you?"
"Yeah." Rose is blushing. "It was nice to meet you too. He always kept talking about you, I didn't know what to expect. I'm so sorry for the dumb question…" She shakes her head, the ends of her dark hair blurring. "I think you're so brave," she says, all her wariness discarded. "You're amazing."
"I'm…" Rey wants to say 'nothing', but that's not true. Not to some people. "I'm still learning."
"Everyone is. General Organa even. This situation's so new, but that still means there's hope." Rose speaks with such conviction, Rey almost believes it's true. "You and Finn, you've given us all so much—"
Rey hugs Rose then because she can't bear anymore. "May the Force be with you," she says.
May the Force be with them all.
Alec enters the throne room with a broad and knowing smile. He was not scheduled on the command ship for another two cycles. Something has certainly pleased him. It reminds Kylo of when they were padawans together, Alec usually discovering trouble first and impatient in his eagerness to share. The Emperor's attendants are alarmed, his newly minted imperial guards stepping forward to block Alec's progression. Their reactions are halted with an impatient Force-push from the knight.
"At ease," Kylo says, holding in a weary sigh. He maintains his neutral expression, the blank mask of his features proving more forbidding than the mechanical toy he had played with for too many years. He regrets Alec's lack of deference in the moment, although perhaps his overriding excitement will turn out justified. "Leave us," Kylo says, and then to his Confessor asks, "Must you make a show out of everything?"
"In this case I reserve the right; I bring most joyous tidings." His friend kneels with a theatrical sweep of one arm. "We have located the Millennium Falcon."
The decaying relic lies shrouded beneath tarps, gathering dust on a long-forgotten moon base. Alec takes Kylo to the exact spot, the Emperor forgoing the trappings of his imperial shuttle and ever-growing entourage. Kylo could feel the displeasure as he made his travel plans known. A breach of protocol. The sense of ulterior motive or something more personal raising the first rumblings of disquiet. Kylo shuts the noises out. He stands in the yellow light of a star, his black cape flecked with white sand as it spreads like a flag in the wind. Alec stands before his father's battered ship as if he has brought Kylo some great trophy.
"How do you wish to destroy it?" he says.
Kylo only walks past him. "Go wait in your ship."
"But—"
Kylo reaches with the Force and casts the tarps aside. They drop to the ground with the speed of arrows. Alec takes his leave, and Kylo stops before the entrance.
Piece of junk, he thinks. Useless machine. He wrenches down the gangplank with the squeeze of a hand, hard enough to twist metal. He stomps inside.
When he had last boarded the structure, he was not tall enough to reach the wookiee's hip. Now he leans down as he enters. He breathes in the stench and remembers the noise of equipment always failing, his father's futile curses and the wookiee's howls. His mother's disappointment. The arguments. The stretch of a million rays of light as his father disappeared once more.
He moves through the various compartments, gloved fingers tracing dents and scratches in the walls. One or two he knows he made himself. Tiny cuts that on their own did nothing. But hundreds of them? Thousands? How many cuts would it take?
The familiar tour takes him down a narrow hallway to the heart of the exhibit. He stoops so he is almost bent double, and when he rises up he sees what his father must have spent most of his adult life seeing.
He sits down in the pilot's seat and closes his eyes. He can feel her presence; his mother was here. One more deep breath, and the memory of another.
She was here as well.
Rey closes her eyes and sinks further into the bath. Such luxury seems offensive given the circumstances, but after a week of posing as refugees aboard a cavernous vessel headed for Plexis, she has learned to cling to every happy moment like salvage to be sold for sustenance.
The bath is a slipstone bowl large enough to fit a happabore. It belongs to a salt baron named Uko, an unremarkable and rather lumpy man married to a highborn friend of Leia's, and one of the few remaining Alderaanians left besides Leia herself. The friend's name is Pamphor. She has kind eyes and a calm spirit, and Rey senses that she wants to help Leia more than her husband will allow.
"We can't cross them," he tells everyone over an elaborate lunch. "The First Order's good for business, and I can't risk the fates of everyone we know."
"But sanctuary," Pamphor insists, "we can give them that," and the lumpy man agrees.
Pamphor's definition of sanctuary is more than anything Rey could imagine. Their home is better described as a castle, on the edges of a lake as wide as the Great Dune Sea. She gives an entire turret to them, with Rey, Leia and Poe each having their own chamber and a shared anteroom. Pamphor forbids the servants to enter for fear that someone will sell their location to the highest bidder. (It is difficult to keep secret the movements of a woman as well-known as Leia Organa, and Rey is only beginning to appreciate this.)
Rey's room is nearly the size of her old AT-AT home, with a refresher containing large windows looking out over the lake and the setting purple sun. She has never taken a bath before. At first she's scared that she might drown in such a volume of water, but she slowly learns to float. It is the most glorious feeling. Wet and warm and perfectly weightless. She loves the sensation of the water on her skin like the finest of fabrics, the way her body moves beneath its surface.
She had a cup of monaki wine with dinner, and now pleasantly buzzed, she lets her mind wander. She thinks of her skin, and of another's stretched taut over solid planes of muscle. It was wet that night too, she thinks, and her mouth is parched. Her hands wander aimlessly, glancing her chest and thighs.
She sighs, and the air shifts. It shimmers and changes and she can feel more than the touch of her own hands upon her.
"How dare you!" She scrambles, reaching over the side for her discarded Jedi robes. She comes up with only her thin grey wrappings and stands with them held around her. "Leave me! I have nothing to say to you."
Ben emerges half in shadow from the darkness of his throne. His eyes are closed and when he opens them she sees the shadows alter. Like oil on water, two incompatible compounds that refuse to mix; she watches as he makes them settle into something solid.
"My offer remains," he says. His voice brings goosebumps to her skin. His gaze feels colder still, but there is heat inside her.
"You still think I would consider? Was I not clear enough? You tried to kill my friends, to kill me!" She carefully steps out from the bath. The length of her leg, glistening with moisture, captures his attention. Weak, she thinks. "How many of your own did you murder on Crait?" She takes a step towards him. "How many more will there be?"
Ben stays silent.
When she glances down she finds her wrappings have failed to hide the deep pink of her nipples, the dark thatch between her legs. She is almost tempted to remove them. There is nothing left. Ben feels it too. A faint vibration flows between them, silky tendrils reaching out for her. A primal need fights his concentration.
"What do you want?" she says. Her hands fall to her sides, but the fabric holds to her wet skin. "Is it just this?"
"A cheap trick not worthy of a Jedi," he sneers.
Is that all it would take? The idea is a dangerous one, but that doesn't make it wrong.
"If I come to you, will you give up this madness?" She takes another step forward. "If you can keep me and lock me up in a cage?"
Fists form with the tension to destroy leather. His face hardens into stone. His gaze breathes fire.
"There is no turning from this path."
"But you could be swayed." She moves ever closer. "I can feel it." The cloth begins to fall, and with the Force she lets it. "You want this."
His eyes stay level with hers. They are black and empty and unfeeling. "I desire your power," he says, "nothing more."
"Then why don't you come closer?"
Instead, it is she who is drawn to him.
"What would happen if you touched me?" Her hand brushes across her stomach. "Do you need my power so you can hide your weakness?"
He is on his feet. There is no distance between them. She can see the great rise and fall of his chest. "You are my weakness, Jedi. And I shall have you. Nothing can stop what is in motion now."
He leans in close, and she could kiss him. She could kick him or drive her palm between his ribs and wrench his heart from his body. Any option would be an act of violence now.
"You cannot have me," she says and her mouth parts and the moment is here. The connection spills open wider, and she can see everything beyond.
His throne is a pilot's chair, the surrounding walls a familiar mess of dirt and missing panels and wires hanging out where she had tried to repair them—
"Is that—are you on the Falcon?"
He looks beyond her; the fading daylight casts a lilac glow across his calculating face. "A purple sun… Plexis."
The connection snaps shut, and Rey is naked and alone. She throws on her clothes, but her hands stay clumsy. It is a horrible dream, and how she wants to wake up. Instead, she rushes into the anteroom where Poe and Leia are still drinking.
Poe grins and says, "You sober up already?"
"We need to leave." Her nightmare continues. "We need to leave right now."
