chapter summary:
Where Kylo tells Rey another version of the truth and she doesn't believe a word he's saying until she has a reason to start believing.
Doubts didn't take long to come back to Rey.
She sped down the highway, racing like hell on wheels away from nothing. A car. She was running away from a car that, in all likelihood, was just some vehicle driven by just some person. Another tourist, perhaps.
"I've lost my mind," she mutters.
Her companion doesn't answer. He grips the side door handle white knuckled and somehow Rey can sense him holding himself back.
Great, she's got a real psychopath with her. Like, the genuine item. The kind that can't separate reality from fiction or a black truck from a tourist.
"There should be a road coming up on the right," he tells her.
Rey's foot remains firmly pressed at 70mph.
"Rey, please turn..."
Her foot eases. She tries to slam it down again to be assertive of her rights to exist, but she's unable to. Kylo frowns, two deep lines etching themselves into his forehead between his eyebrows.
His finger flicks through the air, and the car starts to turn to the right before Rey gives in and controls it down the gravel side road herself.
"Are you kidnapping me?!" she yelps. "Is this a kidnapping? Is that's what's going on? Because if you think you can hold me for ransom you're going to find out pretty damn quick that-"
"Your parents are dead or gone and you have some friends but they're broke and I wouldn't be able to get more than beer money off you. Good thing that's not what this is."
He just read her mind. Or, not even read her mind, because Rey hadn't gotten past thinking that, even if her parents were alive out there somewhere, they probably wouldn't help or could even be contacted.
"Pull over somewhere," he tells her. "We're leaving a huge dust trail. If they're really here, they'll be able to follow it."
"If they're really-"
Oh enough is enough. Rey has indulged this lunatic enough in every way.
She pulls into a rocky circular parking lot. There's an old faded sign indicating some sort of nature trail, but Rey ignore it, puts the car in park, and rests her reeling head in her hands.
Last night… she remembers something. She remembers him putting her to bed. Literally. She had been so loopy and out of it when they'd pulled into the campsite that he had literally picked her up and laid her down in her tent. Even tucked her into her sleeping bag like she was a fitful child.
The memory makes Rey grit her teeth and tears prick at the corners of her eyes. How dare he! The sheer audacity of the man, this stranger-
Her fingers start to claw into her scalp and the abductor in question shifts, the whole car creaking with his weight.
"Rey-"
"Don't."
She doesn't like it when he says her name. She wants to get away from him. Wants none of this to be real.
"What are you going to do with me?" she asks, voice still muffled.
Does she even want to know? Yes and no. But it would be good to have an idea of what this psychopath has planned so she can better prepare her defense. Or offense.
"You're afraid of me. I hate that. I hate it when people are afraid of me."
Rey turns her head slightly, staring at him from the corner of her eye. It's the second time he's said that today and for the life of her Rey just can't get a clear reading on him.
She breaks first.
"I'm going for a walk," she announces, grabbing both the keys and a large bottle of water.
No part of Rey had expected him to just let her go like that, but he does. She doesn't get far, though. No more than twenty paces before he's right there behind her, shadowing her as she stomps up the rocky trail marked with a faded yellow blaze.
Rey doesn't full on run, but she nearly jogs. Walks at a rapid ace that, regrettably, the Stranger has no trouble keeping up with. It occurs to her as the distance between where she is now and the car grows, that wandering off into the wilderness with her kidnapper-slash-possibly-murderer is only going to make his job easier, but she so badly needs some fresh air and movement to try and get her thoughts together.
At the top of the trail is a little lookout point with a podium and a dais with a sketch of the mountains ranges both near and far. Rey squints at it, feeling her annoyance rise when the Stranger stands to the side and uses his own cast shadow to block out the sun so she can read the placard easier.
"There," he points at the printed outline of a peak very far away. "That's where we need to go. I think."
Her denial is as instantaneous as his 'we' part is inexcusable.
"I'm not going anywhere with you." Rey has to fight to keep her voice calm. Don't poke the crazy bear. Just find a way to get out of here.
"Rey-"
"No."
His shoulders slump. Rey finds herself unconsciously leaning forward a little closer to stay in his shade.
"I told you that I need your help. I know you don't think you owe me anything but-"
"I don't. I absolutely don't."
Not even a ride back into town. She's played his game long enough as it is.
"Listen you weirdo," Rey stands as straight and tall as she can. "I'm about five seconds out from doing something if I don't start getting some damn good answers and I don't know what that something is but it's going to be very loud and you're not going to like it."
In Rey's credit, Kylo visibly pales at her vague and rather nonsensical threat. Here she was, a young woman all alone out in the middle of the desert with a creeping, karking shadowy behemoth. All the odds are stacked against her so far that the only real edge she has left is her incredibly foul mouth and fast wit.
Okay okay," the Stranger raises up his hands, alarm etched tightly along his raised brow. "Don't do anything hasty. Or loud. You want to talk, we'll talk."
Rey didn't have a follow up at the ready, so she tries to chisel her jaw and look anything but scared out of her godsdamn skin.
"Great. Glad to hear it."
Kylo starts to pace, his shadow long and lean and flickering against the rocks and the late afternoon sun.
He seems to start and stop himself several times, and Rey finds herself growing equally fearful and curious.
"Fifteen years ago something happened out in those mountains to the west," he finally says. "I had been there somewhere with my uncle. We were searching for something and we'd come very close to finding it. And then… and then I don't remember what happened next. When I woke up, he was gone and people said that I had killed him, but I know I didn't do it."
Rey blinks.
"I don't understand."
And she doesn't. So many questions, but first and foremost being what the hells does any of this have to do with her? This sounds more like the plot of some fantasy book or maybe paranormal TV drama. Is he just playing with her? He might as well be an actor rehearsing his lines for all the sense or credibility that Rey can give him right now.
"I'm looking for the truth," he tells her as the silence grows. "That's why I'm out here with nothing. That's why I came here looking for you. I need to find out what really happened that night."
The wind starts to pick up. Rey doesn't notice at all.
"No, please, listen to me." He steps forward, backing Rey up until the edge of the dais presses against her legs and she hadn't realized that she'd been backing up. "I didn't do it. Any of it. I'm being set up and I need you to help me clear my name. You're the only one who can do it, and we can help each other."
Rey stares at him for a long, long moment. There's nothing…
He believes it. This man standing before her believes every word that he just said. She can feel that he does, see it in the conviction in his eyes and the open plea of his hand slowly reaching out for her.
But what he's saying is ludicrous, point blank.
"No."
"Rey."
She moves to the right, trying to step around him. Kylo steps with her, blocking her escape route.
"What were you doing then?" he asks, matching her move for move. "Fifteen years ago something happened to you on the same day it happened to me. What was it, Rey?"
Rey doesn't have to dig deep to find the memories. Fifteen years a she had been a child and her parents had given her away. Threw her away like she was nothing. She wore the scars of her abandonment every day, even if it's something she deliberately tries to never think of.
"Yes." Kylo's voice is quiet under the sound of his boots crunching closer to her. "But you don't remember either. You must have bee very young, but not that young. Do you remember the night they left you?"
Fifteen years. Fifteen years and it was still a gaping open wound. Kylo's shadow fades across the side of her face but she stubbornly refuses to look anywhere but down.
"July." Same month as now. "It was in July on the-"
"Twenty-ninth."
Her eyes flick up and meet his.
"Twenty-ninth. July twenty-ninth."
"Same for me, Rey. That night that I don't remember what had happened changed everything for me, exactly like it had for you."
Rey refuses to believe it. She doesn't even know what 'it' is, beyond this being one big hell of a coincidence. What are the odds, though? One in three hundred and sixty-five? Low odds for sure, but hardly impossible.
"How did you find that out?" Her voice wavers even if she really, really wants it to hold steady. "I don't tell people about that, so how'd you do it? Break into my records or something? Those should have been sealed."
The Stranger sighs, his whole chest rising and falling. Around him the sky is getting darker and cloudier as a later afternoon storm starts to gather.
"That night, before he disappeared, my uncle told me that something very bad was about to happen. That he couldn't stop it but-"
But it was for his own good. Rey doesn't say it, and neither does Kylo. Her parents had told her something like that too, though the exact details of their words are buried under the repressed pain of a mind far too young to understand why she was being discarded.
"Do you know what else he told me?" It's Rey's turn to step closer as Kylo's voice dims. "He told me that I would find you. That some day I would get away from Snoke and he knew I would come looking for the truth and that I couldn't find it alone. That I would meet someone just like me, just like us, along the way."
Half of what he's saying doesn't make sense and that's being generous.
"Get away from what? Is Snoke the name of...er..."
Rey doesn't know how to tactfully say 'prison' because maybe he was a mental patient. Inmate, perhaps?
Kylo steps closer, once again cooling Rey with his shade. "He told me to find you. Not in so many words, he was very prophetical about it sense… well..." an odd smile crosses his face, a soft one with slight wistfulness. "My uncle was that way. He would talk in riddles. That was part of his character, I guess. But he meant it. He said I would one day break away from Snoke and I would need help to find justice. Bring the truth out into the light. And I did, and now here you are."
Maybe Rey took some peyote or something? Is she tripping right now? Is this all a very strange dream or a drug hallucination? If it is, it's kind of a ride. A hell of a thing.
"What's a Snoke?" she asks again.
The smile falls. Kylo's eye drift to the side to the left and Rey can't remember whether left side means you're lying or you're trying to remember.
"Snoke is a ghost. A dark entity. A force of evil. Whatever you want to call him, he's a phantom that's been haunting my family for generations. My uncle had made it his life's work to stop him and those like him. That night fifteen years ago when this all went down we had gotten too close."
Rey's shoulders slump. Now that's some real Hollywood bullshit right there.
"So, you're like a paranormal hunter, is that it?"
She can't help but feel let down. He'd been doing well up until this point, she'd actually started to feel a little swept up and invested in this lost soul's strange tale of woe. Then he went and broke the disbelief by pushing his story too far into La La Land.
Kylo frowns. Rey starts to frown back. Okay, so he was leading her on, but… but maybe he believes his own bullshit? Which brings her right back to the escaped mental patient theory and that one's is among the most alarming of her hypotheses.
"You don't believe me."
"Not as far as I can throw you."
"Not as… that's not at all, Rey. You couldn't even pick me up."
She huffs in an almost laugh. Again he sounds serious. Has he never heard of a sarcastic metaphor before?
Rey takes a step back, giving the ground a quick glance where she can see a sturdy looking head-bopping rock nearby.
"Kylo, Mr. Whateveryournameis, this was really cool story, lots of fun and twists and turns, but now I'm getting sunburned and tired of this shit so how about-"
"I'll show you again. Then maybe you'll believe me."
He reaches out and Rey scurries backwards, leaving her self-defense rock behind.
"Don't touch me!"
Bad things happen when he touches her. His hand falls and he stands still, watching and waiting.
"I only want to show you something, Rey. I'm not going to hurt you."
Yeah, that's what they all say, isn't it?
"Picture a scene in your mind," he tells her, his hand reaching out but not too close this time. "Picture anything you want. I'll tell you what it is."
Rey scoffs. That would be a nice parlor trick, wouldn't it?
But okay, she can play game. Maybe put him back in his place or at least appease the possible psychopath.
She closes her eyes with reluctance. What should she think about? Nothing obvious like her car or the radio or anything that he might have seen and could guess. Definitely not her tent either. Or pine trees or mountains or the observatory or-
A pressure blankets her mind, sort of like a headache but not really.
"Settle on one image, Rey. You're flicking through them too fast. And it hurts when you try to shove them into my head like that. All you have to do is picture it clearly, that's all."
Okay, so she was wasting too much of his sweet time. What's something that he couldn't possibly have-
"Land of Enchantment," Kylo says. "A faded yellow sign with a chili pepper and four- no, five- bullets in it. You'd thought it was funny. It reminded you of an episode of the Simpsons."
Rey's eyes snap open. That had… even if the freak, her stalker, had somehow been there lurking in the distance as she took a selfie at the state border, he couldn't have possibly guessed the last part of that. It's not like she'd said it out loud or anything.
"What..." what are you?
She'd asked him that before and he hadn't answered. Rey reaches out, grabs his hand to hold him in place and firmly pinches his arm.
"Ow!"
Oh. So he is real?
"You're supposed to do that to yourself, Rey. And do you want me to talk about your tent or the roof of your car you'd pictured the top of my head scarping against or how you'd thought it was funny that I'd flickered through twenty stations of static to settle on Marvin Gaye and-"
"Enough!" Rey lets him go, her heart rate spiking again. Drugs? Is this drugs? Or maybe it's too much sun and she's just finally lost her damn mind. "Stop that. Stay out of my head."
The Stranger steps back then, straightening himself and with it the slight ghost of pressure in her mind retracts as well.
"Twenty four hours, Rey. One day. Give me one day to convince you of what you need to know to believe me. That's all I ask."
One day? That's a long time to be out of your mind.
"And after that what happens? If I tell you to fuck off, will you?"
The wind picks up as the Stranger regards her. For a second, just a brief flash of an instant, Rey can't help but think he's not exactly unattractive. But that's a thought she banishes as he nods.
Nods, but doesn't say yes. Doesn't agree to her terms.
"Oh kriff, let's just get back to the car. Maybe I'll try to run you over or something, maybe that will fix the problem."
Without another word Rey turns, scurrying down the path back to where they had parked and trusting fully that her Shadow will remain exactly that: right by her side where she can't get rid of him.
Fear creeps along her spine, sinking in deep between her shoulders and making adrenaline start to curl through her bloodstream.
What's going on? Why is she more afraid now then when The Man in Black behind her was telling her about ghosts and blackouts and how she's the Chosen One?
"There's someone by my car."
Her voice trembles as she says it, the shock of seeing the vehicle parked next to her own so abrupt it tightens her vocal cords without her realizing it.
Not just someone or some vehicle, but a black pickup truck. It's parked behind hers and sideways, blocking the exit out onto the main road.
Kylo freezes next to her, then he grabs her and yanks them both into the shadow behind a short and scruffy juniper.
"Fuck."
Rey looks up at him. There's that look in his eyes. That same expression of determination meeting panic like he'd had when he'd told- demanded- that she turn her car around and flee from this very same black truck earlier in the day.
"How did it find us?" he whispers. Rey tucks herself in closer to the snarled trunk and further out of sight.
"It must have followed us."
Kylo shakes his head. Rey swallows as the door to the truck opens. Both doors, actually, the driver and the passenger's side as well.
"Walkers aren't that smart. They can barely think at all, so they must have- fuck."
Walkers? They?
"What's going-"
"Quiet," Kylo orders. "Stay out of sight. Do not let them see what you look like. They can't know it's you."
Well that sounds karking ominous doesn't it? Still, seems like prudent advice. Rey watches quietly, peeping out just barely enough to see the driver of the truck step out. Except he doesn't so much step out as he sort of lurches. It's a man wearing a cowboy hat and policeman uniform. He's got on mirrored sunglasses and Rey can't tell much else about him from the distance. He starts to walk to her parked car except it's not by any means a normal gate. It's stiff and mechanical, like the man has two wooden legs and a steel rod along his spine.
Kylo grips her shoulder, either holding her in place or perhaps offering his version of comfort to the alarming scene.
"Fuck," he mutters again, this time with more than just an edge of fear in his voice.
The figure on the passenger side is… off. He moves like a reflection, almost shimmering like the distortion of heat on the horizon. Rey can't see the man's face because it's not clear. It keeps moving and changing right before her very eyes.
Rey blinks, shaking her head and trying to make sense of what she's both seeing and not seeing.
"He sent a projection," Kylo whispers so quietly she can barely hear him. Why would he kriffing send a projection?"
Yeah, a 'projection'. That's what that second man looks like. A 3D image of a person but not the real thing.
Projection? Walkers? Bad drugs or bad sun or just plain crazy. Pick and choose which one fits the break in reality the best.
"Okay, I really want to wake up now." Rey pinches herself. Pinches harder. She'd slap herself but that would make too much noise.
Kylo's hand tightens on her shoulder as the policeman lumbers over to the driver's side door of her car and tries to open it. Locked. Rey holds her breath.
Then the sheriff raises his arm into a fist and punches straight through, shattering the glass with his bare hand.
"Hey!" Rey cries out, indignation suddenly overtaking her.
He just broke into her kriffing car! Sheriff or not, that's some karking illegal shit right there!
The sheriff stops fumbling with the inside lock and turns slowly to look at her. Next to him the shadowy figure, the projection, pauses.
Then it starts to race forward, flickering in and out of sight as it covers ground far faster than actually possible.
"Fuck!" Kylo yanks Rey away from the tree, dragging her backwards along with him.
The projection is suddenly nowhere to be seen and the Sheriff is stumbling toward them, slower than they are but shuffling forward with determination.
"Run!" Kylo shouts, nearly pulling her off her feet.
Together they bolt, racing back up the hill away from both her car and the two intruders.
Author's note:
One day late, damnit… And we're playing around with the timeline of Rey's parents leaving her. Just work with me here on this...
Good twist this chapter? Remember how I said this was going to follow the plot of Under Skies You Could Drown In? Well not so much, apparently. I needed Rey to get really invested in the action way sooner than she did in Skies (where her 'should I stay or go' was one of the weaker plot points that dragged the story down). Okay, so now she's got some real supernatural shit going down that she HAS to deal with. Sorry Rey, can't run away from this!
And the next chapter may or may not be delayed, IDK yet. I think it may be a shorter chase sequence, so hopefully not. I'm nearly finished with On Ben's Knee so that's going to take priority for this week.
Next chapter: Turns out Kylo wasn't as totally full of bullshit as Rey had just assumed he was. There will be a time and a place for Q&A and ch4 is probably not going to be it for our duo!
ps. Cookie for anyone who can guess the musical reference behind the chapter title.
Comment replies:
Shestoolazytologin- Thanks for your words of support! This chapter was easier and I'm feeling more confident on the direction of the story. Decided to focus on equal parts romance (which we haven't gotten to much yet) and the paranormal elements which came out in ch3 in force! Thanks as always for commenting! (insert symbol of a hear 3 which fanfiction dot net doesn't allow me to do, lol)
Taylor – I'm glad you liked this chapter! It was a real departure from the original but there's going to be a lot of parallels as well. All of my favorite scenes will find their way in, but this time with a hopefully much tighter plot. Thanks for commenting!
Sydkiwi – Ha! Rey was thinking the same things about dumping him by the road, believe me! Little too late now though, isn't it? Thanks so much for commenting!