Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 11: Carry You
Fandom: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with references to all canon universes and non-canon supports as necessary
Author: Kira Solo
Summary: "…Between us the bond deepened, growing into something that could not be undone." (Bastila Shan) A story that explores the depths of the bond between Rey and Ben Solo in an emerging future where one's destiny might be shaped by the pull towards a higher purpose — a Force whose will is greater than the desires of those that are drawn together because of it. REYLO.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo
Warnings: Language, violence, scenes of a sexual nature, angst
Author's Notes: Following the release of this chapter, I'm slowing down my posting schedule to one chapter a week for foreseeable future. I've got a finite amount of this written so I've gotta slow it down a bit. See you... I dunno? Next Saturday, maybe?
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For Darkness, Stars
Chapter XI: Carry You
-Though the past, the unwanted memories, are holding onto you
All the power in the universe conspires to carry you
Truths you find through your adversities will defend you
As your powers and all your energies conspire to carry you
- "Carry You", VNV Nation
...
There is an otherworldly beauty that lends itself to destruction. A silence that fills the space between moments as they stretch — growing taut in anticipation as you wait for destiny to arrive. It was a distant thought that he remembered from his childhood; a yearning that often drew his eyes to the horizon and the galaxy beyond, watching for stars. His father used to say Luke often looked to the sky in his youth, before the burden of responsibility weighted his shoulders and cast his attention towards more practical things.
Kylo Ren looked to the sky as it fell, the sounds of the forest becoming a roar as the clouds broke open, the air thick with ozone and electricity, the scorched tang of burning wood, and he watched as the heavens descended in a blaze. He raised his hand to it, the breath caught in his throat — Rey's sheer, desperate power wrapped around him still, and he couldn't breathe for it:
Beautiful. Terrible. Touched by the dark. Stronger than he'd ever imagined.
There was no time to savor the fear that followed, though it rose in them both.
His reflexes had never failed him so thoroughly before. Surprise, not skill, stopped him as a deafening crack and the sound of shattering wood overpowered the falling rain. Plumes of flame lit the descending dark. A shout from his left snatched at his attention.
She'd summoned force lightning. He was certain of it, though the storm that followed couldn't have been her doing. There were light side abilities that allowed the Jedi to commune with animals, but never nature — not that he'd ever heard of. She'd siphoned some of his abilities before, too; doubtless a result of their bond. An unexpected exchange between them resulted in gleaning some of her memories, and she, some of his skill. This, however — this particular feat was beyond his expertise.
Too slowly, Ben turned to find Rey's eyes wide as she flung herself towards him. The look of panic she wore raised the hair on the back of his arms — electric, that feeling — that her concern was for him and not herself, though he'd only moments before tried to uphold his promise: destroy her. Destroy it all. And he — foolish and pouring confessions, those things left understood but unsaid between them ringing in those self-made silences since she'd left him in Snoke's throne room — could do nothing but marvel at the way this nobody from nowhere ran towards him as if he were somehow worthy of saving.
There wasn't the time to think on it. The moment as the tree fell towards him hung suspended as if on a caught breath. There wasn't the time enough for anything, and then, everything sped up.
The world tilted and him with it as she slammed her hands into him. Falling, he slipped from the log, his feet no longer finding purchase on the slimy surface. Rey turned, flinging an arm up to ward off the crushing blow of the falling tree. Struck by the storm, the tree brought flame with it, lighting the night sky red — swallowing the world in a blaze. Rey leaped after him but not quickly enough. She wrenched, twisting in pain midair as the branches struck her in the back; the side. Flung sideways, she crumpled, buffeted off the largest of the branches on her way down. He felt a slash of sympathetic pain in his side, buckling his ribs. It arrived so suddenly that he thought he'd been clipped. It only registered a moment later that it was impossible.
Ben didn't feel himself hitting the swamp, though his leg bleated pain and water closed in over him in a cold rush that left his lungs seizing in shock at the temperature change. He surged upward, a throb of heat rising from his side as he gasped into it and took a mouthful of stagnant bog water for the trouble.
A twin splash matched his own as, overhead, the log he'd just stood on caught the flaming tree. Wood cracked, the branches lashing downwards onto them. Sparks fell hissing into the water, sending up plumes of steam. The heat grew, splashes in the water around him as parts broke off and struck the surface. Yards away, Rey pulled herself to her hands, gasping enough to manage a snarl of pain.
He didn't say anything. Didn't call after her when she lifted her head, her arms shuddering, the pale fabric of her clothing darkened with mud, and something else — blood.
Ben gripped his side, mirroring Rey's movement, but where her fingers came away smeared with red, his were clean. Ben shook his head, sloshing backward, trying to put some distance between him and the crackling, consuming flame that spit and hissed as old wood struck the water around him — trying to understand the pain in his body. Had he struck something in the swamp?
The girl could barely hold herself up. Even from where he dragged himself to his knees, one foot sinking into the sediment of the swamp, he could see that she struggled with her injury. A phantom pain bit into his ribs as Rey turned, struggling to haul herself up, and Ben swore at the same time as Rey cried out. It hurt him when she moved.
"Stop," he gasped. His vision spotted.
He could leave her. He should leave her. Weakened as she was, he could thrust her face-first into the swamp and drown her right there. She wouldn't have the fight left in her to fend him off. The felled tree crackled as the trunk began to split, the roar of fire catching despite the damp. He swallowed a breath, tried to dampen his uncertainty as she turned dark eyes onto him, seeming to give him a nod as if to say she didn't owe him a damned thing for the trouble. She wasn't asking for his help. She wouldn't plead with her eyes — not this time.
But something was wrong. Something that pulled in stitches at his side, like being bitten by the bolt of a crossbow, but worse because he knew with all certainty that he hadn't been hurt and he was feeling a mirror of her injury — a phantom pain that bled through their bond with surprising and sharp clarity. Ben shook his head, opening his mouth to try and tell her not to move any farther because she'd only make it worse for both of them.
A flash of green laser fire struck the trunk of a tree just past her shoulder and Rey's attention whipped around. He sensed the garrison as they arrived on foot. Speeders in the distance. Fighters descending from overhead and into the trees, past them to the south. Rey flinched, ducking, her teeth grit together in pain and surprise. Several shots fired, and Kylo Ren strained, searching for the source.
Three stormtroopers appeared ghostly through the gloom, clambering over the trees towards him. Their radios crackled, signaling for backup. One gestured in his direction.
When he turned back, Rey had staggered into a run, splashing onto higher ground. She wouldn't make it far, not while bleeding as she was. A stitch in his side gave a throb.
"Wait!" he cried, but she did not stop. She didn't know that their connection had somehow dug a little deeper, drawing them more tightly together. She didn't know that their bond was forging itself into something new.
Kylo Ren stood on weakened legs and sloshed through the muck, following after her, not wanting to lose sight of her. He reached after her with his senses — his feelings — and touched her anxious panic: a muddle of emotions that tumbled together, limned with an obscuring mist as she tried to dampen her own mounting fear at her injuries.
If Rey struggled onto solid ground where it would be easier to escape, he'd lose her.
Orange jumpsuits in the distance. Resistance fighters. Blaster fire speared the trees around him as he side-stepped the burning branches, his drenched clothes warmed by the flame but otherwise un-singed.
He blinked and caught a glimpse through their bond — a sense impression rather than a complete picture of the girl: warmth spreading down her left side, clothes leadened by water, making each step heavier, each breath searing her lungs, her throat raw from his baptism by the swamp.
Ren forced the sensation away, clambering after her onto a log and hauling himself up to standing. He surged forwards as the wood became interspersed with jagged stones; the remnants of ancient structures rising from the gloom of the forest: forgotten temples, broken buildings, remnants of a jungle civilization that flourished and faded.
Rey's path was clearer now through the trees: she became a receding grey dot in the distance, running for one of the TIE fighters that had touched down in the clearing a few hundred yards away.
"Rey!" he roared. She did not stop.
Overhead, an X-Wing grazed the treetops, pursued by several of his own soldiers and raining leaves and debris through the trees. Ren's own craft was a wreck, and Rey escaping him in the condition that she was seemed more an insult than anything else.
If he couldn't kill her, he could at least use her as leverage against the New Republic that so desperately would not die; at least he could separate her from her ragtag pack of allies long enough to sort out just what exactly was binding them… and how to put an end to it before she figured out the depths of the problem for herself; before she realized that their bond made him a First Order security liability.
It was a sensible solution, Ren decided, hauling himself forward at a surer march — determined now that his path felt clearer. The bog became sodden grasses, high and twisted with felled woods. He emerged onto an embankment that edged the clearing in time to see the girl surge for the nearest ship — nestled between the stone faces of some archaic ruin that the trees had not yet claimed with their vines and verdure.
Rey, in the distance, had sped to a run that should have been far faster than her abilities allowed her. He snarled as he watched her clamber into the cockpit of a TIE.
Gesturing for the troopers following him to pursue, he grit his teeth against the phantom pain in his ribs. But no sooner than he had given the order and struck out his hand to summon his saber to him than a shot grazed his arm. He spun, staggering into the clearing, as from behind him in the trees, blaster fire knocked two troopers off their feet. The wound stung, the joints numbed to prickling pinpoints. Useless. Ren tried to flex his fingers, but the hand had become a club of meat as numbness from the blaster's stun setting crawled up his arm.
"Not another step," FN-2187 warned after him. With wild eyes, throwing a harried look at his friend's escape attempt, the traitor approached him — trying to buy Rey more time to escape.
Ren took a step, but another spear of blaster fire striking a tree trunk behind him halted his approach.
"Back off!" FN-2187 snarled. He gripped the blaster with two hands. The Wookie must have landed the Falcon not far from the battle site. Fortunately, the traitor had come alone.
Kylo Ren straightened, turning and tucking his useless arm behind him.
"Have you come to save your girlfriend, traitor?" he sneered.
The former trooper regarded him with a mingling of anger and determination that set his jaw. Where had that determination been when they'd programmed him, Ren wondered. In the cockpit, Rey flipped several switches as the windshield descended.
FN-2187 turned back to him, his jaw set. "Whatever I have to do to keep you away from her; physically, or otherwise." His Adam's apple bobbed. Interesting, Ren thought. "I don't know why or how you managed it — I don't know what kind of weird wizardry you're using — but you're going to leave Rey alone."
He knew about their force bond, but not because Rey had confessed to it — that much was clear. It was obvious that Rey wasn't revealing all their secrets just yet.
"Whatever it takes — we look after our own," FN-2187 affirmed. How noble.
An oblique smile pulled at his mouth as Kylo Ren's lightsaber struck his palm.
"You never were particularly good at taking orders, FN-2187 — as demonstrated by the fact that she deliberately tried to keep you from harm's way, and you somehow seemed to find your way back to it."
He slammed the saber into wakefulness at his side — a violent red that lit the gloom. He wondered if Rey knew her best efforts had only brought her friends to the killing floor. The former soldier was no match for him, as demonstrated by the last time he and FN-2187 had tangled.
"My name is Finn!" Two shots fired, both deflected with ease. He sent them ricocheting into the trees.
"I don't care!" he roared back, striking out his weakened, tingling hand as if to swipe the traitor to the side into the trees. It was as restrained a kindness as he could manage, especially since the other, more obvious option would require better articulation of his thumb before he managed to raise the man into the air by his throat.
Rey's scream, however, didn't acknowledge the gesture.
Advancing on the TIE as the cockpit door shut, her pale face stood out in the darkness, eyes haunted as her gaze flicked up to meet his. The machinery lit around her, revealing with stark clarity the smudges beneath her eyes and the blue cast to her lips. How much blood had she lost? The pain in his side throbbed like it was becoming an old friend. He saw her wince and was certain the expression on his face wasn't dissimilar. She marked him, confusion mingling in with adrenaline, weakness in the muscles, pain and blood loss, flicking the switches to turn the TIE on. She could fire on him from where she sat, swing her guns around and try to sizzle him into a scorch mark, but he knew she wouldn't.
A roar and a crash from the trees, and FN-2187 was on his feet.
Ren didn't turn. The traitor wasn't his objective — like a persistent gnat, he was merely a distraction meant to irritate, to delay, to allow Rey an open opportunity to escape.
Ren would carve her out of that TIE Fighter like it was a roast shatual, toss her over his shoulder, and cart her back to base and lock her in his own chamber until they got to the bottom of their bond's limits. The phantom pain in his side pinched. He hissed, dragging his sleeve across his forehead. He was sweating. Even the hand that held his saber didn't grip with the strength he was accustomed to. This was very, very wrong.
A warning blast from his left drew his attention back to the traitor. It clipped his saber, sending the device spinning away from him. He watched it sail away with a frown, disbelief turning him slow. The world doubled, his throat closing. Numbness coated his tongue as the blood rushed from his head all at once. The world tilted, and Kylo Ren caught himself before he could stagger.
"Hey! Supreme Leader!" the traitor yelled. "Why don't you pick on someone who's still able to fight?"
This was very wrong. Ren touched his side as his strength ebbed back to him. He was certain: he was experiencing Rey's injuries in bursts through their force bond. He wasn't certain how it was possible, but the strain on her was affecting him as well.
"You're not a part of this," he snapped. "It doesn't concern you."
The idiot in front of him had no clue. The TIE raised a few feet off the ground, hovering a second as Rey gathered her bearings and her strength. When Ben looked back to her, her teeth were grit in a snarl, her knuckles white on the controls.
Finn raised the blaster as Ben raised his hand toward him off from firing. His shout of, "No —" came exactly a millisecond too late. From the corner of his eye, Rey's TIE had lifted overhead, about to clear the trees as the blast hit Ben in the left shoulder. It flung him backward, spinning with the force of it.
Stunned. The traitor had set his blaster to stun. His first thought was, "How pathetic," followed quickly by paralytic surprise that he'd been shot and too weakened and too slow to deflect it.
Eyes open, Ben took a moment lying in the wet grass to process what he was seeing overhead. The pains of his body were a distant consideration as the TIE veered left sharply, spiraling into a sharp bank that sent it careening into a nearby tree as spun Rey out. Limbs frozen, Ben knew just as quickly that he'd been forgotten as the traitor noticed that there was something wrong with the girl.
Too quietly for anyone to hear, Ben managed to breathe the word, "Rey" as their force bond snapped taut, and he saw her: the whites of her eyes too wide, the waxy sheen to her complexion giving her a sallow cast. Worse, he could see her straining knuckles, her palms sliding off the controls from the sweat as she struggled to keep control.
She favored her left shoulder — the same spot he'd been hit. It must have startled her. She must have lost her grip as she felt the same slap of pain that had struck him. It hurt, but it was nothing like the persistent throb in his ribs that she'd sustained earlier. The surprise of it must have been too much.
The sound of crunching metal as the TIE clipped a tree filled the clearing as the right wing broke off the craft and Rey spun back to the forest floor. By some small mercy, the tree she'd struck buffered her fall, its branches turning her descent into a jagged lurch towards the earth. Rey made a noise in the back of her throat — half a whine, half a bid for control over the vessel as her muscles gave out. Ben's vision spotted and went black. His muscles slackened, and he struggled to regain consciousness before his slipped from him as Rey's had.
He felt the impact in two places: in his head, and through the forest floor beneath his back. Ben jerked to full wakefulness, the smoke and explosions of the encroaching battle turning the air acrid. Smoke plumes over the trees. The guttering, hollow sound of First Order guns. Stormtroopers flooded the clearing.
He rolled to his side, then to his stomach, fighting back the inkblot of unconsciousness that threatened — her unconsciousness. The TIE had crumpled between the trees, becoming little more than a flattened wad of scrap. FN-2187 was distracted, blaster fire meeting his as the Resistance fighters joined the fray.
Ben Solo pulled himself to standing, and hobbled forwards to the wreck without a backward glance. They wouldn't touch him. He gripped his side, his bones jabbing into his vital organs, shifting in pain with each step. He bared his teeth, struggling towards the TIE, lightsaber out. Darkness threatened behind his eyes. His lungs burned as the acrid waft of burning fuel as the ship smoked and sparked. The scent reached his nostrils, and Ben's eyes began to water.
In the cockpit, Rey had slouched to the side. Blood slipped from her forehead in a stream. Her right side was a dark contrast to her pallor.
His limbs felt as if they belonged to someone else as he plunged the saber blade into the wreck, slicing out the crushed locking mechanism that crunched and pinged. Something in the hyperdrive was clicking viciously, a sure sign of an impending explosion as the machinery guttered and a flame licked up from the dashboard. The compressor was overheating. That was where the smoke was coming from.
If he didn't hurry, the TIE would become Rey's coffin — and his as well by the looks of it.
The latch gave with a ping, and with failing strength, one hand still numbed, he hauled at the door. Stuck. It wouldn't give more than an inch.
"Rey!" he shouted. Voice hoarse, he bellowed her name through the glass again, but she remained unmoving. Unconscious. He dragged the saber through the reinforcements, bellowing for her to wake up. The door remained wedged, pummelled so thoroughly that he could only try to slice a hole.
Inside the cockpit, smoke began to pour from the machinery. There was no time.
An answering roar from his left hardly gave him pause as a furred hand came down on his shoulder, pulling him away from the wreck.
"No!" Ben bellowed, but Chewbacca's answering snarl stopped him. The wookie shouldered in front of him, continuing his work and hauling the door clean from its hinges. Ben didn't have a chance to breathe a sigh of relief as Chewbacca collected Rey from the seat, tearing the belts from their latches and tossing her over a shoulder.
The message he roared at Ben was clear — they needed to move. Now.
Ben staggered backward, his lightsaber snapping off in the darkness as unconsciousness threatened again. The world around him doubled, growing blurry. Ben felt his legs buckle, their shared injuries all at once becoming too great for him to endure. She was safe, at least — no thanks to him, he thought distantly.
Chewie yapped a protest, a hand snapping out to clutch Ben's arm before he collapsed. One blink too long, and his body sagged — matching Rey's prostrate form. The wookie snatched at him, yawping a startled complaint. A furry arm circled him, pulling him upright even as his head rolled back on his shoulders. His fingers wound into fur as the wookie hauled him into a staggering, half-conscious run to clear the impending detonation.
Ben could feel himself sinking, and, unable to stop it, he managed desperately, quietly, "Thank you," as the world blinked into darkness once, twice. A glimpse of the forest. Chewbacca said something he didn't catch. His feet tangled, roots and vines catching at him as the wookie half-carried-half-dragged him and Rey both. Darkness again. A glimpse of his father's ship, the bay door open and humming. The sound filled Ben's head.
Something boomed in the distance. Rey's stolen, felled TIE. The interplay of shadows and light behind his eyes swallowed the world, and then unconsciousness claimed Ben Solo.