Chapter 4
Speak to Me
Kylo Ren felt something shift and it startled him awake. Part of him expected to see Rey somewhere around, even ignoring him, but she wasn't. The shift in the Force was subtle but unsettling all the same. He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. There was a little light blinking from his bedside table and upon looking at the device blinking he realized that it was just the report he had requested before leaving the meeting earlier in the day. He opened the report on his tablet and skimmed it. It was just a bunch of boring political crap and at the bottom was a request from Hux for a private audience. He frowned and decided to meet with the General the next day. It wasn't that late in the day but he wasn't ready to talk minutiae with the man, in all honesty he wanted to get out and wander.
His head was feeling weird again. Ever since Snoke had died his mind just felt empty and anxious at the same time. He couldn't put words to it, but he knew deep down that Snoke had always been there. For as long as he could remember Snoke had been just as much part of his life like a limb and now that it was gone… The ghost of a feeling was still there. He had thrown it all away, for HER and now look at where he was. He was a warrior, a fighter, not a Supreme Leader. Who was he kidding? If she had just taken his hand then they could have ruled the First Order together. She would probably know what to do with all the nonsense that Hux kept throwing at him.
Ren started to pull on some clothes and tried to shake the feeling of prickles from his nerves. He needed to get out. He wandered out into the hall and used the Force to shift people's focus from him. They wouldn't really see him walking past them and they certainly wouldn't remember crossing paths. He had long gotten used to the stiff way people looked at him as Kylo Ren, but now as Supreme Leader he felt like he was being stared at and scrutinized even more harshly. Really he wanted to see Rey again, at first she looked at him with hate, then with compassion, and finally with disappointment and sadness, because of him and for him. He hated that the most. He could handle the hate, he could accept the compassion, but the disappointment and sadness, those hurt. He was loathe to admit it but he really wanted to know what it looked like to see her smile. He had seen the loneliness in her mind, he had seen the abject sadness of her position in life, but wrapped around that was a strong spirit, an optimistic outlook, and a sense of spunkiness that he had only glimpsed in her memories and seen for the briefest of moments in Snoke's throne room. She was a force of a person, just as strong as her control over the Force itself.
Ren found himself outside. The sun had fallen recently and the sky was a brilliant orange and red. He let out a sigh and pushed his way through the people shuffling up and down the street. None of them looked at him except in passing and there was little emotion or accusation to their gazes. To them he was nothing and for a time that's all he wanted.
Rey sat in the cockpit with Chewie as they began the process of taking apart some of the stupider upgrades to the ship that Unkar Plutt had placed on the ship during his brief ownership of the Falcon. "He was only good at swindling people," Rey commented to Chewie as she yanked at a yellow wire under the console.
Chewie rumbled a response and the little porg on his shoulder squaked noisily. The meeting with Leia, Poe and the others had gone well. Leia was working to create the foundations of the new rebellion by making supply connections and convincing the allies of the former Resistance that there was still hope for their cause. In spite of how far they had fallen, Leia had grown with the rebellion against the former Empire over three decades ago and she was in her element, with, an albeit depressed, Poe at her side she seemed ready for the fight ahead.
Inevitably her thoughts turned to Ben. She peeled the casing of a piece of wire away with her knife and wrapped the exposed metal around another open wire under the console. She had felt so heartbroken that he had turned away from escaping the First Order, that she hadn't been enough to pull him along with her. Rey knew Ben still had the potential in him and the vision of him turning was still bright in her mind's eye. She had begun to suspect that the future she saw wasn't supposed to be in the throne room but elsewhere, somewhere in the far future, the path to which was still unclear to her. There were little feelings that plagued her that since Luke had passed that some things she had been besieged by since her youth had been resolved but others were still loose ends reaching out into the galaxy to find purchase. The island Ahch-to, as soon as she saw it, she knew that those dreams hadn't been dreams but visions of the future. That's why she had assumed so strongly that the vision of Ben turning away from the dark had to be the future and it was so strong it had to be soon. But she had been wrong. He hadn't turned, but she had to give him credit. He had taken a step away from Snoke in killing him but not the next to take him away from the dark side. She had sensed his fear after their fight with the Praetorian guards. He was afraid to be alone, afraid that he had taken the clear path of the dark side under Snoke away from himself.
What hurt the most had been the "Please..." as he had nearly begged her to not leave him. He had been afraid that she would leave him, and she had fulfilled that fear. It broke her heart but she had to stand her ground.
She felt a subtle shift in the Force and for a brief moment thought that the Force might be connecting her and Ben again. But the shift in senses and sound never came. Something pricked at her nerves and she shuddered.
Chewie looked up and growled a query, there was concern on his face.
"No, not cold, not sure. I might just need to step out for a few," Rey said and untangled herself from the console wires. "I'll be back Chewie, I'm going to get some air."
Chewie muttered a "be careful" and went back to work on his part of the console.
Rey grabbed her staff and satchel which carried a few credits, the broken lightsaber, and a little canteen. She stepped out into the bright light of the bustling space port and made a beeline for the stalls selling wares to travellers coming and going. She had been putting off thinking about the lightsaber but while the meeting had taken place earlier she had flipped through the sacred Jedi texts and found one that detailed how to build lightsabers. It was just the basics and the words were in an ancient form of Arabesh that she had only a vague grasp of. As a child and teenager she had been a voracious reader especially once she got her little computer working to let her use a flight simulator. Precious portions had been traded for the data sticks and days of time gathering the parts from various Rebellion and Empire ships across Jakku, but once it had been up and running she had read anything and everything she could get her hands on. Her fluency with many common tongues in the galaxy was due to finding the internal storage of a translator droid when she was twelve and spending many a sleepless night learning to foreign languages.
She stopped outside the stall of a junk trader and sighed. The little creature behind the counter wasn't nearly as grotesque as Unkar Plutt had been but he had the same eyes. Conniving, secretive, and willing to stab anyone in the back. She focused on the little mind of the alien and as she questioned him about parts she needed she pushed the parts of his thoughts around subtly so that he wouldn't be compelled to sell her broken parts or faulty electronics.
The book on how to build lightsabers had only gone into minor details about connecting the kyber crystal to an emitter. Nothing about style or form. That was apparently up to the wielder. She hadn't minded the form of the Skywalker blade but the balance had felt off, because it hadn't been made with her hands in mind.
Leaving the stall with a few small parts that spoke to her, Rey moved on to other stalls, picking up a piece here, another there. Somewhere in the back of her mind tiny memories that weren't her own but ones that she had fed off in times of great need helped her frame some of the things she would need to build the saber. The memories were Ben's from when she had invaded his mind during his interrogation of her at Starkiller base. She hadn't realized just how much her mind had siphoned off him until she had reached the quiet island of Ahch-to and had to shuffle the scattered memories around in her mind. Sometimes lately when she slept the dreams and nightmares that still woke her in the night they weren't always her own and she felt even more for the abuse that Ben had endured his whole life. His childhood, his adulthood, it had all been stolen by Snoke.
She felt the shift in sound and space and looking across the scattered crowds saw Ben walking side by side with her. He looked down at her stunned and opened his mouth to speak. She looked away and willed the connection to go away. She wasn't ready yet. After a moment things returned to normal and she shuddered, she knew that with the Force still connecting them that eventually she would have to speak to him, but it couldn't be yet, it couldn't be now. She had to figure out her own emotions before she could give anything more to him. The brief glimpse she had gotten of him showed him in a simple black shirt with his normal black pants. There was no cape, no cowl, he looked so aggressively normal that if she didn't know better she would have assumed him to be just any other pedestrian in the street. His eyes had been sad, lost. If she hadn't looked away she might have tried to hug him and there was no telling what physical contact would do over the Force bond. Last time it had shown them each visions of a future that might or might not come to pass. She wasn't ready to add more uncertainty to her life.
Hux typed out the communique with as much detail as he could. The recipient probably wouldn't need that much detail but he wasn't about to leave anything to chance. Ren hadn't shown his face after Hux had sent the report of the duties assigned to each territorial governor but he wasn't too terribly broken up about it. All he needed to do was poke and prod at the man a little to figure out just how much control over the First Order Hux would get away with uninterrupted.
He had also sent a request to a certain person under Snoke's command that hadn't been seen in this part of the galaxy in nearly two years. She had been away doing the bidding of Snoke. With her and the recipient of this communique he would get the First Order back on track. Kylo Ren would get his comeuppance.
With a smile he reread over his words, changed a few things, and then sent the message. He wasn't sure if he would get a response. The person at the other end of this message was very far away.
He got a beep from his console and smiled wickedly. Vic Elan, Snoke's other apprentice had received and replied. She was on her way from the other side of the galaxy. Hux had met Vic Elan only once in his career as a member of the First Order, but she had been just as intimidating as Kylo Ren. Snoke knew how to pick fierce apprentices and Hux hoped that she wouldn't be as easily swayed by the wiles of some Jedi girl. Now he just had to wait for the second communique to reach its target.
"Only a matter of time, Ben Solo." Hux said and picked up one of the things recovered from Snoke's throne room. A black diamond set on a gold ring. It had to be pulled off Snoke's severed hand and the ring was far too big for him to wear but Kylo Ren hadn't seemed interested in retaining the thing. "Only a matter of time."
TBC… Hux got some shiz up his sleeve.
I read somewhere that Snoke supposedly has another apprentice so that's why I created Vic Elan. Don't be afraid of a self-insert, Mary Sue, because if I do this right she won't be one.