Chapter Two: Swaying Thoughts
Kylo Ren watched his scavenger freeze in her own breath and collapse as if some other force had stolen the life from her own finger tips. She cried out as the blast rung through her back I'm and came to rest inside her body, she clutched herself in the wound and glared up at him with the most severe expression he'd ever seen.
A flare of emotion was sent his way and he felt himself unable to conduct these feelings he sensed from her. The connection between them was pulsing as if it were a heartbeat as if it were his own—her heartbeat— struggling to keep its host alive. Then it weakened. He watched her hazel eyes flutter slightly as she turned to look up at him. Ren felt his wrath wanting to expose itself and it was to be unleashed with an exacting vengeance.
He sauntered toward the poor soul that strike the scavenger and the trooper stood there with his arm suspended, shaking as he lowered it. The Dark Lord could sense the fear and regret emanating from the trooper. He thought to relish in the feeling as he stole the breath from his body. Opening his palm like a blossoming flower, the force raised his body several feet above the ground. He managed to sputter only a few syllables as he clutched at his throat in desperation.
"You've made a grave mistake," he rumbled through his mask. "Now you're going to pay for it with your life." Kylo Ren's hand, an extension of himself now, continued to squelch the air out of the trooper's throat and raise him even higher for dramatic effect. Another minute passed before the Stormtrooper lay lifeless in the hands of the Dark Side of the Force. He let his body drop to the ground with a sickening thud and gave a promising threat to anyone else.
"Does anyone else wish to interrupt?"
They all stood affirmatively and in a collective response they answered. "No, sir."
"Good." Ren said as he commanded the troopers, "I expect you to get rid of this mess."
Ren, a massive black phantom, had drifted off to the Scavenger who'd been almost in complete surrender to her own system of comatose. Or death. He didn't wait to see which it ended up being. He clasped her underside and the back of her knees to securely strap her against his chest. Those that hadn't carried the dead Stormtrooper off, were watching their commander and clearly his actions had bubbled some kind of perplexity.
"What are you waiting for? Seize the rebels," his voice hummed through the mask and dissipated throughout the range of the battlefield. He commanded his troops with his back to them and his attention geared on a certain force-sensitive. Several troopers jogged past their commander and collected Resistance rebels, shoving them onto a transport shuttle to never be seen again.
Ren looked down at her pitiful state and quickly he gathered that she be transferred to a medical bay. She wouldn't last long if her wound left untreated.
As he watched the surgical droid work on the Scavenger, impatiently he sealed the door shut with a punch of security codes. She was breathing heavily; her lips would open and wouldn't stop creasing during sudden skewering pain. He knew she was crippling within herself and he could feel its remnants resounding through a faint bond.
He looked at her trembling hands, they were bandaged in training gauze. There was an arm guard on each side and an elementary tan uniform that every Padawan in the Jedi Academy had worn. Her fingers and palms appeared as if they were used in light saber lessons every day she'd been on that island.
She looked so open and vulnerable the way she lay—examining her would prove nothing too fatal. Such a powerful force sensitive and yet here she was, fighting for the right to live. He could tell she'd never experienced something like this and that this kind of sensation was distant and inexplicable.
She truly thought she was going to die.
He watched the girl with an oppressive curiosity and neared her heaving body. He was closer than he wanted himself to be. Some blood was cauterized by the heat of the blaster shot yet it hadn't been enough to seal the wound; it began soaking through the bandages and the droid continually replaced and bullied into her skin. It had her turned over on her side to tend to both entrance and exit of the wound.
He didn't realize how deadly things like this were. How feeble it seemed to him and his power. Without warning and without heed and here the scavenger was—bloodier than he'd ever seen her.
"Master Ren." The droid was watching its master with an ignorance that irritated Ren enough, "the bacta tank may be our final option. If you wish the girl to heal more quickly—"
"I know she will," growled he. "Not yet," Ren felt unsure if this would be the right decision. He wanted her to grow from this kind of pain and build strength in overcoming it. "If she is as strong as the Scavenger from my visions then so be it—let her abilities take their own course and I will see what happens."
He waited three years. This long and he'd waited for the opportune moment to strike when right—no. He wouldn't strike when fate allows it, but under his circumstances and under his control would he create the right conditions to capture the scavenger.
She was out there in the open, a heroine amidst a swarm of enemies and she dare not flee. He knew what type of person she was. He had only wanted the storm troopers to fire at the rebels, to draw out Rey. He realized that the only way to pull her out from hiding was to attack her dear friends and loved ones.
And now he'd been far too close to lose the only force sensitive being in the universe—at least one that even he slightly abided by.
He was too close.
He let himself wander too close and forced several footsteps back so that he collided with the entrance. He collided with himself as well.
…
Rey woke feeling numb. It was as if her body parts had been replaced with new machinery and they hadn't been working properly. She realized the feeling in her legs hadn't been there and it soured her mood severely—a migraine sprouting its way in the back of her skull.
"You've been here for several days already, Scavenger." A voice peered through her solemn silence, "Had I known you'd have been this fragile, I—"
"You never would have searched for me?" Rey answered for him, finally, "that you would have killed me off the moment you find me a liability?"
He watched with that impassive mask of his and said nothing. She had a feeling he wanted to say something but the words had never left his mouth—or his mask for that matter.
Rey thrusted her chest forward and laid her weight on the base of her elbows, her long braid coiled around the nape of her neck. She looked down at her stomach and an unpleasant discoloring of branded skin and fresh blood painted the gauze. Its appearance was more hideous than it was painful, however.
Rey softly started again, "come to think of it, why is it that I'm alive? Why are you keeping me here?" She knew her fate would soon be a saber with her heart as its sheath or even less mercifully would be an end by means of the Force. A Dark Force.
He simply gave her every moment of attention and she felt crippled under the weight of his stare—be he masked or unmasked. She was going to die soon and he was surely contemplating it.
"I'm not going to kill you." He answered for her, and paced along the foot of the bed and entwined his hand behind his back, "you are here as my guest."
"Guest? I'm your guest in this sorry state?" She felt her breath catching in her throat during a momentary pause, "what use am I to you? What could I possibly provide?"
She could see a twitch in his shoulder before he answered her again.
"I have news to share with you," he said while ignoring her pleas, the animosity of that mask was all she could focus on and it was simultaneously something she could latch herself to. Everything else inside this room had overlain her muse in restless monotony and boredom.
"I'm alive?" She spewed sarcastically.
"You survived the procedure. Yes, you are alive." He repeated her word; she felt him gentle and less than intimidating than he'd portrayed himself a few days ago. Though the softness was coupled with pity and a sense of sorrow, as if he were delivering bad news to a dying patient. "Alive and well." He repeated himself and with less sincerity, "though I cannot say the same for the rest of you."
Her eyes shot toward him, and she felt her breath rise too sharply for her cavity to handle.
"You are… paralyzed from the waist down." He said it so disparagingly as he himself believed that this couldn't have happened.
"Paralyzed…" Rey repeated. She felt the coldness of reality numb her senses. Her mind swirled and thought of every possibility. Of how this happened. Of how she could have avoided it. At first, she couldn't accept his words. Now that she considered how unresponsive her body had been—it had all come together in her mind. If she thought her existence meaningless, then she didn't truly realize that up until that moment, everything had truly been stripped away from her. It was something far more precious than petty allegiances—it was her freedom.
"As we fought, the blaster shot penetrated your spinal cord, damaging it inconclusively—"
Spinal cord…
Rey glared at him so intensely she felt her eyes sting with dryness.
And just like that, with one ill-fated strike the entirety of her life had been stolen
"I know what that means—" Rey quickly bit back with the skin of teeth and she felt the wetness of her tears roll down her cheek. Her shoulders and arms were now buckling under the weight of her chest and she sunk inwardly in defeat.
What had she done to deserve this? Why… why does misfortune always greet her on her doorstep like this? Anguish settled snugly in her chest. He seemed disappointed to have lost a personal possession or have something valuable to him damaged. She wanted his obsession with to cease finally, to lay waste and let her sleep peacefully.
…
Several days had come to pass and Rey found herself contemplating suicide, the thoughts were transient and vanished as soon as she'd blinked.
"Why haven't you eaten any of your meals?" Kylo Ren questioned the young Padawan as he slipped through the entrance, his helmet tucked neatly at his underside. He entered a series of codes to seal the entrance shut. Presumably to have his privacy with her. As new air filtered through the room, he carried a scent of smoked sandalwood.
It was strangely pleasant.
"I," she mumbled softly. It felt strange discussing her past with the likes of him. She felt disgusted but carried on her conversation. "I don't have much of an appetite. I'd have long lost myself to starvation and thirst before turning thirteen."
"More than three days without eating? On that junkyard of a planet? Surely you'd have found something and sold it for spoils." He remained stagnant as he observed her and then he placed his helmet at her bedside table with a gentle clang. It felt strange having him comment on her home as if he held some place in understanding with her. "You should eat," he politely instructed.
"I'll pass on that today." A harsh retort on her lips, "why feed someone who is going to be disabled for the rest of their life anyway?"
"You've become quite the pragmatist since I've last known you."
"Yeah?" Rey found herself growing irritated with the apparent lack of formalities. They weren't friends and they never were going to be. He was the enemy and that's all he will ever be. "The door is that way. Or you could use your saber and end it right now."
"I didn't come here to discuss how I plan to end you—"
"So you were going to kill me anyway?" Not a care and not a consideration as to how crippled she appeared.
She wanted to feel. She was trapped. She felt isolated more than she'd ever been on Jakku. She decided to vent her anger into something else now. Something less wretched.
"You killed that Storm Trooper," Rey murmured through the silence; resting herself fully on the mattress and her sight would not escape the vents and lighting fixtures of the ceiling. "Didn't you?"
"I did." His voice melted in her ears. "Either way you would've wanted him dead."
"I wouldn't have." Pleats of hazelnut hair began to form as she shook her head, "you're just as bad as they come. As they say—"
"As they say?"
"I've heard several things about you—about Kylo Ren. You're willing to murder your own people over the simplest of matters."
"This wasn't a simple matter." Rey caught his eyes and they were a molten russet brown; she allowed her gaze to wander to the ceiling again. For a moment—for one solitary moment—she thought he cared about her. "This wasn't simple at all and you should realize the great lengths I've taken to find you."
"Find me and then what? Detain me in this sorry state? You're only keeping me alive because you want to rip the force out of m—"
And before she could finish anything else she wanted to say, she heard him draw out a lowly snort.
"What?" She asked and he was glaring at her like she had said the most incredulous thing.
"The Force...it doesn't work that way." He murmured and pulled off a sleek glove from one hand. She watched him levitate the fabric above his dominant hand, the force being used so meekly by the likes of him. "Didn't your master teach you anything?"
"He taught me to avoid people like you—"
"Like me? Like his nephew?"
"Yes. And how his nephew destroyed his life's work and legacy. Do you understand what it feels like to be betrayed like that?" Of course, Master Luke had never said such things specifically but she felt it. From him she felt how torn and broken down he was. The spite was on her tongue, hate and spoon-fed disgust for Kylo Ren, "to be turned back on in such a way you would resort to isolate yourself? And wallow in your own failures?"
"Unfortunately, that is something that I do understand."
She felt the anger rise to her cheeks and she stared him down and felt no inclination to break the contact. "Kriffing scum. You don't understand anything—you're just a spoiled brat who'd had everything handed down to him. And then what? You repay that kind of kindness with a saber to your own father's heart?"
He did not stir and the force flickered in a way she felt something off-tilt. Was it a nuance of regret? She didn't know. She could feel something but didn't know what it was. The levitating glove landed back into his palm.
As if he were avoiding the former subject matter altogether he started with an exasperated tone, "going back on what I said earlier—it is possible to exhaust someone of their ability to use the Force. An ability as old as Sith themselves. That, however, is something lost to the workings of time."
She found no problem continuing with this kind of conversation with him and maybe, discussing his own patricide might lead to rather nasty consequences. "Didn't you say 'the Force can't do that'? And now it can?"
"Just as someone can use the Force to heal others and one-self, in a way they may use it strip away at their connection. But never fully severing it."
Rey was silent, pondering these words. Luke had never mentioned something as drastic as this and she was left to her own conclusions about the Dark Side. The Sith.
"And even more—their life. Their sustenance."
Her breath refused to drive through her lungs and she found herself contemplating how it felt to do something like that to someone. Intentionally. She shuttered a groan and realized that maybe her medication had been dissipating already.
He stood from the lurch of his chair and departed for the medicine chest that held every kind of pain-killer there was on this ship. Was he going to drug her? Where was her medical droid?
"This kind of ability isn't something you can learn," he paused with his sculpted back facing away from her. "You experience this kind of darkness before you learn to wield it. And you can't read incantations from a textbook. There are no Sith and there are no Jedi masters who will lend their wise words—"
Rey looked at him in a way and in a certain kind of curiosity. "But you prefer to kill the old-fashioned way." Rey interjected, "isn't that right?"
"I do." Ren said, "it is thrilling. It powers you—"
"Well thankfully I have other unpleasant things to look forward to," Rey sighed and shifted herself so that her wounds would not be scraping against the mattress sheets. "Go on and kill me the old-fashioned way then. Since it thrills you."
"You will receive no such treatment," she'd heard him put that glove back on, "you are here as my guest."
Her momentary peace was uplifted when she felt the head rest of her bed further and the groaning of the bed reached her ears. She cast her eyes to the Ren holding a call-light remote, working with its buttons and other special functions. Rey was genuinely confused with the way he was treating her.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to call for someone to feed you," he casually explained, placing the remote right beside her dominant hand. His glove lightly brushed against her skin, a shiver ran over her entire arm.
"Call them then." The cripple muttered disdainfully and she looked away from him in disgust.
Rey had grown tired of looking at Ren's face. The shape of his face, black hair and eyes were a perfect mix of his parents. When she looked at him, there was a stern and calculating look that resembled his father all too well. And when they rest, she could see the honey brown eyes that came from his mother.
She'd like to think he was a monster, but these thoughts continue to sway and fade every day he'd come to visit her.
"You're either going to have a nurse or a protocol droid come feed you." His voice rolled low and softly, drowning in a sense of sorry for the scavenger, "the choice is yours."
"Neither." Rey concluded with an unforgiving tone, "it's not like I've ever had a choice with you anyway."
She could feel him glaring down at her with a harsh gaze. It was harder to fight this man with the way he looked at her—he'd put his all into everything. He was passionate in his Dark Side and the Dark Side had thrived in him.
Rey side-eyed him for a moment before boring her gaze into the wall straight ahead. He doesn't deserve her respect. He was still waiting with arms built ready at his sides. What was he going to do? Torture her into submission?
"Rey," she felt Kylo Ren near her now, her name in his voice made her feel uncomfortable. This was the first he'd said it. She didn't know what was worse, him calling her name of the fact that half of her body was in rolling agony.
She felt an unyielding grip on her jaw which tore her gaze away from a solid point and up to his. Pain skulked where his fingers pressed and even more had been the heat in her cheeks—the pain of crippling embarrassment before the enemy.
"I am not your enemy here." He said, and again, "I have never been your enemy. I am here to teach you. Mend you and show you the wonders of the universe that you've yet to learn. You were fascinated by the things I've told you and now you want me to end your life?"
She didn't know what to feel.
"Someone is going to hold you like this," he tended to her face so that she would look at him, "while they shove tubes through your nose. Feedings like this exist so that people can receive the necessary sustenance for the day. Is this how you want to live?"
Slapping away his hand, she fought hard to hold back the tears. It felt disparaging knowing that life was going to be like this from now on. If she had to choose, it would be the perilous life of a desert scavenger over a disabled slave of the First Order. She would choose it in several lifetimes if she had to.
She just wanted her legs back.
"Don't call anyone." Rey swallowed away the something that collected in the back of her throat. She dared not to look at him when she requested solitude, "just leave me be."
Ren presumably agreed with the request and left the untouched tray of food at her bedside. The untouched pills were beside her headrest. The young woman broke down in tears as soon as the door sealed shut, realizing how disconnected she was from herself.
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