"The Supreme Leader has been waiting for you, Inquisitor Ren," the chrome trooper said in her maddeningly calm and regal voice. Kira blinked. She hadn't known that Supreme Leader Snoke had already been on connection.
"Lead the way, Captain Phasma," Kira said with an admirable lack of irritation and fear in her voice, despite the way the female stormtrooper's voice and emotionless demeanor made her skin crawl.
Kira entered a room alone, and stepped onto the circle in a kneeling position, much like Lord Vader used to when he talked to the Emperor. Snoke's snakelike face appeared just barely from under the hood in a blue scale.
"My lord," she said in a reverent tone. "I will do as you please."
"Ah, my dear Kira," he said in his deep, grumbling voice after snakelike laughter that sounded like the Tatooine rattlesnake's rattling. "So eager to please. I do have a task for you, of course."
"I will complete in the glorious name of Darth Vader and the Knights of Ren," she vowed through gritted teeth.
"Very good, my inquisitor. Our general, little Kylo, he has been missing. The First Order has informed me that they believe they have located the planet he crashed on. I want you to go and retrieve him," he ordered.
"He is one of us, my lord," she reminded him as she licked her lips out of nervous habit. "He will surely come with just a stormtrooper."
"Come now," Snoke's voice became dangerously sweet. "You remember his training, do you not, dear Kira? He may get the idea in his head that he is free from us and may think it wise to desert."
Kira winced at the memories of how difficult it was to train and break him as a boy. "I will find him milord, and I will bring him back alive."
"Good, good," Snoke crooned. "You are dismissed, Inquisitor Ren."
Kira nodded, and knelt as the transmission ended. She got back up, and exited to where Captain Phasma was waiting for her. The inhumanly icy woman nodded.
"Did your communication go as planned? It was cut off quite soon," the female trooper noted.
"Everything is fine," Kira assured her through gritted teeth. "Take my request to the hangar bay. I want a TIE-fighter ready by the time I exit my conference. Is that understood, trooper?"
Despite the regality of the ice woman, she made no physical response, just nodded and marched away. Kira gave an irritated, spastic shriek that earned her disturbed feelings in the Force from the other troopers. She calmed herself, and she sashayed into a conference of the upper circle of the Knights of Ren.
Business in Jakku continued as usual, except for that no one approached within ten feet of Kylo, and Rey was treated with a distant respect. Although one did notice the boys of the village gathering with whispers.
It was in the canvas tent where Rey worked that she began to pick up on something. Kylo was back at the AT-AT, for he had learned when to just leave her be. Sometimes, she needed to be alone to think.
She could hear things, but when she closed her eyes, she could hear something very soft, almost like thoughts-
Thank the Force he isn't here.
We need to get the plan together.
The sooner he's gone, the sooner things can get back to the way they were before.
Why does she protect him? She's stupid-
Rey jerked out when the overwhelming darkness came into her reverie, and she felt cold. What was she feeling? She rubbed her arms even though they were covered with the light, coarse clothing that kept sand out.
She looked up to see Kylo coming towards her. She was used to his serious expressions, but that didn't explain why the cold seemed to be timed perfectly to his arrival.
"How are you?" She asked as she tried to shake off the effects of her sixth sense.
"Alright," he answered, but Rey knew the words to be at least a half-lie. "And you are?"
"I'm just fine," she said, ignoring her lingering feelings.
He sat down in front of her, and almost magically those boys drifted away like the holos of flocks of birds. He watched her hands move over the mechanics of the engine that was always her long-term project. If she could just get a working engine, fixing up one of the fighters, or even whatever was left of Kylo's command shuttle, he had told her it was called, into a working ship that could get her off this Force-forsaken rock.
She hesitated with the copper wiring. If she could get this to work, she'd be one step closer to getting off of Jakku. She touched the wires, but the engine did not respond in her experiment. She groaned and hit her head against the table.
"Ow," she groaned. She looked up, grabbed her wrench, and whacked the crapsack engine with her wrench due to frustration. She was about to whack it again when the wrench was taken right out of her hands. It hovered in midair and set itself down on the table.
"Are you okay?" Kylo asked.
"You did that," Rey accused. "With your hokey religion."
"The Force," he corrected her. "And yes. Why did you get so angry?"
She sighed, and set her head down on folded arms. "All I've wanted is to leave. I feel like it's impossible. I was meant to go other places, I know this in my heart, Kylo. I was meant to do something, something more than myself. I've wanted to leave to be loved, to do something."
Her eyes looked to the sky. "I've dreamed of four people waiting for me, and that the people across the galaxy would cheer, like I'm a missing princess or something. One of them was a Wookie, he was soft to hug and he'd growl to a melody that a woman in white would sing. . ." She trailed off as a tear trickled down her cheek. "Kylo, I think that woman was my mother. I also would hear my father telling me to that he loved me just as much as some falcon. Then there was this blond man in black, and he told me to trust the Force."
She bowed her head. "I know it's a stupid dream, but I always see it playing in front of my eyes."
Kylo was at a loss for words. He took Rey's hands into his own, and she looked up at him, tears still dripping down her smooth cheeks. He leaned closer and kissed them away. He pulled away, her dark eyes intent on him.
"I'll help you get there, Rey," he promised. Her dream had stirred something within him, his own longings for a family, his own dreams about a brother in that golden world, always laughing, and parents that smiled sadly and told him he'd understand in a haunted chorus. "Someday, you'll leave Jakku, and we'll-"
He stopped. He couldn't got back to the First Order, or they'd destroy Rey, and he'd be something even more shattered and darkened than he was before. Even for a few days, a week, really, being exposed to her light was enough to change him. That, and her affection, her kindly company. He could never go back to the life he'd led before. That would be too painful to bear.
"Someday," he began again as he heard his voice crack. "Someday we'll find a place of our own, just the two of us."
"That sounds nice," she remarked. "But the two of us, maybe a family, galavanting across the galaxy in a large-enough ship. . . Sounds like paradise."
"It does," he agreed as he got up, walked around the table, and sat down beside her as he reclaimed her hands. "Mostly because you're there."
She smiled and kissed him.
