Apologies for the delay. It's been a rough couple weeks.

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Euphoria

I couldn't see her. I knew she was near, but I didn't know where or how close. That didn't stop her smile from permeating the distance between us, slicing through the expanse of space that separated us like there was no separation at all.

Something inside me positively thrummed with the feeling of her proximity.

I did not like that at all. I couldn't accept something else inside me, something that wasn't me. It was an invader. An infection that would expand if left there to fester. The last time I had allowed something foreign to take up residence in the back of my mind, it had been Snoke, and while I could admit that he had been instrumental in me winning this seat in which I now sat, he had been the root of the decay.

My greatest fear with this new presence, shaped like a woman haloed by blinding light, was that it could not be snuffed out. Her image should have died with Snoke. Her body should be laid out alongside the remains of the Resistance. I should have no contest. Instead there she was, smiling at me, like it was normal. It was comforting, which made it terrifying. I didn't know what this connection was, other than that it was the bastard creation of my former master, but some part of me, the stardust, that which would someday become the Force, liked it.

I suddenly began to see her smile with greater clarity, and her eyes began to come into focus. In a moment of panic, I instinctively pushed with the Force against her, and to my surprise her shape grew clouded again.

"Supreme Leader."

The clipped tones of General Hux, usually an annoyance that made me grind my teeth, were a welcome relief.

"Hux," I acknowledged, intentionally greeting him with less formality.

"You sent for me."

"Nearly an hour ago, yes."

Hux shifted his feet wider, preparing for a challenge.

"What do you require?" He asked.

I stared at him, wanting a fight. I wanted a reason to get rid of him before he had the chance to get rid of me. I knew that was his intention - his body reeked of hate and envy, and he had absolutely no control over how it leaked out of his pores like a sickness; I could feel the Force slosh around him, thick and slow, like pushing through black mud that tasted like death. Hux's removal from the First Order was necessary and inevitable, but in this one instance he had an advantage over me: his army, which, for the time being, I needed. The army, however, was loyal to him, though I may bend them to my will through fear, but subjects who fear their ruler slowly lose their fear of pain, and then they make unwise decisions.

So for now I was stuck with Hux and the threat he carried. For now, he stood by my side, but carried a knife behind his back. For this reason, I did not torment him as I might have before. Instead, I answered, "I have reviewed the blueprints your engineers delivered."

Hux straightened, pushing his shoulders back just slightly, and his heels clicked together. "My engineers are the very best, you'll find," He gloated, chin turned up with the overconfidence and blind ignorance of a preening rooster, "Their new prototypes will-"

"I don't like them," I interrupted, and rather than encourage his ridiculous expression of shock, I continued immediately, "I asked for creativity. For something new. What you've given me is a sadistic boy's imaginings of the ultimate war machine, and what's worse: it's little more than another Starkiller that just happens to have a few extra guns, and therefore more opportunities for sabotage."

There was a silent pause, during which Hux twisted his hands behind his back and attempted to gather his words. His normally sickly pale face was reddening and swelling from his anger.

"Supreme Leader," He replied with a condescending edge, "We will win this war by erasing all traces of resistance from the map. For that, we need weapons."

"We also need men, and we still have not recovered our losses after Starkiller, nor those from the attack on the Supremacy. Massive power has its advantages, but it also put a massive target on our back that all of the galaxy could see; I will not be repeating Snoke's mistake."

Hux's lips peeled back from his teeth, showing his emotions like a dog.

"What then is your intention? Surely not to make peace."

"You think in black and white," I accused, but I kept my voice steady in contrast to his, "The First Order's mission is to secure a longstanding governmental system that will be applied in every corner of the galaxy. We will- damn!"

A shock of fiery pain shot through my left hand and trailed up my arm into my elbow, numbing like the skeletal, reaching claws of lightning. Grimacing, I clutched my wrist in my other hand and found it tender to the touch.

"Sir?"

I shook my arm, which only seemed to worsen the pain as my clothes rubbed against the soreness, and stiffened my posture, trying to reassume a commanding presence. Hux was watching me with narrowed eyes and the slightest curve to his lips, like a cat deciding where to strike its prey first. Something, whatever this was, continued to throb in my bones, and the burning tendrils of the shock ignited my heart into a rapid flutter, as though I had just finished a sprint.

Pushing it all away, I continued, "The First Order's primary goal had been to eradicate all threats to our regime, which we are on the verge of accomplishing, and following that we must-"

A new pain, sharper and cold this time, sliced a jagged line across my chest and torso. I felt the Force around me quicken, roiling like the sea before a storm, and the image of the smiling girl returned, but now her face was pale and shined with sweat, and she was screaming something that could have been words, but I couldn't distinguish them from the sound of the ringing in my ears.

"Go!" I ordered Hux, who only continued to stare at me as I clutched my abdomen. I couldn't push this pain away with the Force… this pain wasn't mine. But with what little control I did feel I could exert right now, I reached out and bared my teeth, and suddenly the man in front of me was clawing at his throat, gasping for breath. "Go, I said!"

I tossed him aside, and the general scrambled to pull himself off the floor and hurry out of the room. Once he was gone, I finally let the link flood my consciousness.

Rey appeared in front of me in a flash, and while I couldn't see what she was fighting, I knew she was struggling. I could hear her heartbeat pounding through my body like it was my own, every labored breath she took filled my lungs and made them seize when the breaths came too fast, too ragged. The pain I had felt - her pain - burned like flames now, gnawing at my flesh and swelling it like infection had somehow already set in. Through my grimace, I watched her swing her staff one handed - the left hand, not as coordinated - and the other hand, her right, curled tightly against her chest. It was red and marred by oozing polyps.

She would lose like this. Something told me to not let that happen.

Another set of jagged lines raked their way down my back, and Rey screamed. Struggling through our shared pain, I unclipped my lightsaber.

"Rey!" I called. She didn't acknowledge me, but I knew she heard me. I reached for her and grabbed her forearm.

It took a moment to reorient myself in the sweltering jungle she had started to call home, at least temporarily. Beneath my feet, the ground was soft and moist and it exuded the feeling of both life and death. Overhead, I was shielded by dense canopy from the burning rays of the sun. Behind me, Rey was there, pressed against my back, and I could feel her process the sudden shock of my appearance before refocusing her attention on the two creatures before us.

I did the same and quickly realized I didn't know what they were.

My initial analysis placed them as distinctly feline in nature, but then their heads were dotted with bottomless black eyes, in the center of which were three tiny points of light, like a spider, and their great maws, devoid of teeth but for a ring of rear facing, needle-like fangs circling the throat, opened wide to the point of nearly unhinging like a snake. Its body was hairless, but its thick skin was a sickly green-yellow, slashed by black stripes, and covered in pustules that appeared to serve as hosts to swarms of tiny, black insects. Behind them whipped a tail that split into two close to the base. Six legs carried their massive bodies, but only four seemed to serve as such: the most forward pair reached out towards me and Rey with dexterous hands, grasping with three spindly fingers, if fingers had five joints each and were capped with retractable claws that reeked of rot and sulfur.

In retrospect, I wasn't sure what made me think these things were in any way related to cats.

My lightsaber thrummed and crackled to life, spitting in anticipation of the taste of cauterized flesh. I felt Rey grip my forearm like I had hers, and we began to dance.

Saber and staff hummed together as they cut through the air, lending a new sound to the cacophony of piercing screams of the creatures that suddenly were evenly matched. As they lunged for us, we reacted together, stepping here or providing balance there, as though this was not only the second time we fought as one, but rather the culmination of a lifetime of training and cooperation. The Force sang with our unity and flowed freely between us, guiding us, speaking for us so that we would not have to waste our breath. Rey was always where I needed her to be, and I was where I felt she needed me to be; I ducked when her staff spun over our heads, and she leapt over a low swing of my saber that removed a set of claws and joints. It was a fight, and there was blood and sweat and adrenaline and there was nothing beautiful about it, and it was difficult because their hides were tough and I got the sense they were somewhere on the spectrum of Force sensitivity, so sometimes our joint attacks were evaded or even predicted, but I had not felt this confident about who I was and what I was meant to do since… since…

I had no idea.

A swift uppercut sliced through the creature's shoulder, finally, and it howled as the muscles gave way beneath its body. Eyes wide and unblinking, it tried lashing out at me again with the other set of claws, but I swung away from it and drove my lightsaber into its throat. The thing, desperate in its death throes, tried to swallow the burning plasma shaft, but it was dead before it ever had the chance to contemplate the futility of its efforts.

Our arms still linked, I whirled around to face the remaining threat alongside her, but apparently these creatures are less ferocious on their own: finding itself alone, it yowled a terrible cry, and then retreated to lick its wounds.

Then it was nothing but our labored breaths and the feel of our hands on each other. I felt euphoric. The high of a good fight, amplified by the rightness of our unity, and the approval of the Force… that ended when Rey collapsed to her knees, nearly taking me down with her, but I kept my footing.

"What happened?" I demanded as I rode the aftermath of an adrenaline rush. She had already confirmed that this planet was an unknown, and I could not identify the Force sensitive creatures she had encountered, so I felt my suspicion natural. I knelt beside her for my own comfort.

Rey shook her head and hissed in pain. "I don't know. I don't know where they came from… I didn't feel them approach…"

"What about your hand?"

She looked down at the pulsing burns that had scorched black the wrappings up her arm. "My lightsaber," She admitted, averting her eyes in shame, "I tried to fix it earlier, thought I had managed it with some parts I scavenged, but it overheated."

"I told you to wait until I could get you parts."

"I know, I was going to have you look at it first, but then this happened and I had to try…"

Annoyed, I said, "It could have been far worse. It could have killed you."

"I know…"

"The parts are only part of the problem. I told you, your kyber is cracked; it's not going to function like normal kyber crystals."

"I know…"

"Do you? You said it yourself, you don't know what you're doing."

"I'm sorry…"

"Your crystal is corrupted, Rey, it's going to take time before it responds properly, if it does at all. If you want this to work, you'll need to adapt to compensate for the instability like I had to, and for that you'll need to be patient and wait for the damn parts!"

"I'm sorry, Ben, I didn't mean to worry you…"

The words were spoken softly, but it felt like a slap across the face. It occurred to me suddenly that maybe she didn't need a lecture right now.

"Kylo," I corrected.

"Sorry. Kylo."

"Stop apologizing," I snapped, irritated by my own revelation, "I'm not worried. You need to-"

"Rey!"

Both of us sat up, but for different reasons, when a not so distant voice called her name. It was male, deep, and full of concern, and satisfyingly recognizable. Rey looked at me, her eyes wide in panic.

"No," She breathed, watching as I moved to stand. The voice shouted again, closer, and I heard him crashing through the underbrush.

"FN-2187," I murmured to myself, naming my target. Rey I could tolerate for now. We weren't finished yet. But him… I had no tolerance for traitors.

"Please," Rey implored, but I made no acknowledgement of her.

Another shout. I squeezed the hilt of my saber. Rey dug her nails into my forearm and opened her mouth to scream:

"Get awa-"

Like a kick to the gut, I was suddenly on my back, staring at the black ceiling of the conference room in which I had earlier spoken with Hux. A second later, I gulped in a ragged breath that had been stolen from me by the abruptness of our disconnection. My eyes blinked rapidly, adjusting to the chance of lighting. No Rey. No jungle. No traitor.

Frustrated and bewildered, I pounded my fist on the cold, hard floor and found my skin still burned from what I now understood was the bite of Rey's misfiring lightsaber.