*Author's Note*
I am so, so sorry that this chapter was so late!! It took me a while to get the plot under control. I hope you enjoy this extra long chapter:)Chapter 12
When Rey awoke the next morning, she reached out for Kylo, but all she felt were the sheets on the bed. She waved her arms around but didn't come in contact with what she wanted to. Slowly, she sat up and pulled the blanket up to cover her naked body. She was a little sore from the night before, but not as sore as she was their first time. Last night, they had barely gotten any sleep and she was beyond tired. They made love until dawn, making up for the lost time. He worshiped her body in every way possible, and she did the same to him.
Sighing, she got out of bed and went towards the bathroom where she heard the water running. She paused at the door, wondering what to do. Should I just leave him be or should I join him? She made a rash decision and went for the latter of the two. Opening the door, she stepped into the bathroom and caught sight of Kylo's figure standing with his back towards her. The glass that surrounded the shower was fogged because of the hot steam the water was producing. She saw him turn around, and he looked to be starring at her. She struggled to see through the glass, so she couldn't tell. She saw his arm move towards the shower handle and pull it open, revealing his naked, dripping wet body. His arms reached out for her and wrapped around her waist, pulling her in with him as she let out a giggle. As soon as her body hit the hot water, he began to kiss her passionately. Their tongues battled in a heated kiss while Kylo's hands drifted lower to rest on her rear. She played with his hair and ran her hands up and down his back as he nibbled on her bottom lip, eliciting a moan from her. She could feel how much he enjoyed her moan, and he backed her up against the shower wall.
Not wasting any time, Kylo thrusted into her and began to pump back and forth. Rey dug her fingernails into his shoulders as she buried her head into the crook of his neck. His hands grasped her hips so hard, she knew they would probably leave bruises. The shower was filled with moans and grunts as the two continued. Kylo brought his hand up to Rey's head and pulled it back gently. They locked eyes as he continued to pump, none of them wanting to break their trance.
Kylo could tell he was close, so he began to rub her little bundle until they both were coming together. The two stayed in that position for a while, with Kylo still buried deep inside of her and Rey with her legs wrapped around his waist and back against the wall. Slowly, she slid her legs down his body and he took a step back, giving her some space. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. "Well good morning," she said with a smile.
Kylo grinned and let out a small laugh. "Good morning to you too," he said as he kissed her again. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up. We should train today."
Rey nodded and stepped under the water, making sure her hair was entirely wet. Kylo got some shampoo and began to massage it into her hair. After she had rinsed it all out, he washed her body with soap, making sure to cover every square inch. She began to think this shower was more for him than for her, but she didn't mind.
When they stepped out of the shower, he wrapped a fluffy towel around her as he did the same for himself. They both walked out of the bathroom and into their bedroom where they gathered their clothes for the day. Rey could feel that Kylo wanted to push her onto the bed and go for round two, but he figured that they needed to train, so he stopped himself. She pulled on her light grey pants that stopped at her mid-calf and a matching tank top. She liked the light grey, but she had gotten very used to the black clothing that Kylo would always give her. Turning around, she noticed that Kylo was given black clothes, and she smiled. He simply wore black pants and a black t-shirt, but she liked it.
Smiling at him, she grabbed his hand and held it in hers as they left their room and made their way towards the training room. They only took the wrong turn a couple times, but they finally got to their destination. Rey was glad that it was early in the morning and only a few people were in the hallways, for she could feel the fear radiating off of those few people. When they would pass, she would simply look up and smile at Kylo, putting her head on his shoulder. Occasionally, she would speak to him through their bond, always making him laugh and the things she would say about the bystanders. She felt like they were a real couple, without any problems, and she reveled in it.
Once in the training room, they began with meditation. Rey focused on all of the pent up feelings that she had underwent over the past couple of weeks. She thought of her first time with Kylo, the way she felt when she watched him kill his own father, the internal battle she fought with herself about whether to take Kylo with her or not, the longing she felt when he had been asleep for two days, and their reconnection. All of those feelings coursed through her as she focused on freeing each one of them until she was completely relaxed. Once there, she slowly opened her eyes and saw Kylo still sitting in front of her with his eyes still closed. She came to the conclusion that he was still meditating, for he probably had a lot of feelings to sift through, so she went over to the few worn-down punching bags that were sitting in the corner of the room.
She started off strong, using all of her energy to swing her arms hard, but she quickly tired. She hadn't worked out in a few days, and her body could feel it. She turned around and noticed that Kylo was still in his trance, so she continued. Beads of sweat dripped down her face as she continued to punch the life out of the bag. Just when she thought she couldn't continue much longer, she bent her elbow back, preparing for another blow, and hit something hard, hearing a crack.
"Ouch!" She heard the person behind her say. She quickly spun around, preparing to launch another blow to whomever was behind her, when she saw Finn hunched over, holding his nose. "Oh Force! I'm so sorry Finn!" she exclaimed as she ran to his side and put her hand on his back. She saw some blood on his hands, so she guided him towards the door. "We should probably get you to the medical wing. Your nose is most likely broken."
"I'll go. I came to tell you that the General requested your presence in her quarters. You and... him," he spoke through gritted teeth. Through all the ruckus, Kylo had managed to not break his focus. Rey was in awe. Turning back to Finn, she put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Come visit me when you get out of the medical wing. I feel so horrible."
"It's fine, don't worry about it. I shouldn't have crept up to you anyways. And by the way, you've got quite an arm," he joked. Rey could tell he was trying to be his humorous self to put her at ease, but she could sense his pain. With a nod, he turned on his heel and walked out the door, quickly making his way towards the medical wing. Rey bit her lip and turned back around to see Kylo starring at her. She sauntered up to him and fell to her knees, so that they were mere inches apart. "Your mother wishes to speak with us. That was what Finn was here to tell us. Well, after I broke his nose-"
"You broke his nose!" An amused Kylo asked her. Rey could slap his smile off of his face, but she decided against it. "It was an accident! He was the one that snuck up to me!" she tried to defend herself.
Kylo quieted her with a peck on the lips. Still grinning, he said, "Okay okay I believe you. Now, my mother wants to speak to me?"
"Yes, in her quarters."
"Wait, she is allowing me to leave my room for another purpose other than training?" Kylo joked.
Rey smiled and pressed her lips to his cheek and whispered into his ear, "Well, it's only because you're with me."
Rising to his feet, Kylo pulled Rey up as well and gave her one last kiss. "Then we better get going then. We can't have the General waiting, now can we?" he spoke as he dragged her out of the training room.
The two walked through the hallway hand in hand until they reached Leia's quarters. Rey slipped her hand out of his grasp, replacing it with the other one, and slid her hand to his back, stroking it reassuringly. They glanced at each other and he leaned down and placed a quick kiss to her lips before knocking on the door. "Come in!" They heard before Kylo reached out and pressed a button on the door, making it open with a hiss. The two stepped in and noticed Leia sitting at her desk with an odd expression on her face. Rey thought that she looked a little worried, but she brushed it off and decided to just focus on what the General had called them in for. Rey and Kylo sat down in the two chairs in front of Leia's desk. There was an awkward silence as the three sat there and said nothing.
Leia cleared her throat and began to speak. "I'm sure you both are wondering why I brought you here?" she asked them with her eyebrows raised. The two shared a glance and nodded. Rey could feel Kylo's uneasiness. What if she wanted to talk about Han Solo? Rey wasn't sure if he could handle it all.
"Ben, I mean, um, what is it that I should call you?" She asked as her eyes narrowed in thought and her hands clasped together on the desk. Kylo swallowed and remained quiet for a few seconds. He was debating whether or not he should give his mother permission to call him by his original name. After all, he knew for a fact that she would refuse to call him Kylo Ren. He shared another look with Rey and sighed. "You can call me Ben. But I'm only granting you this because you have allowed me to comfortably live amongst the Resistance and I am grateful."
"Thank you, Ben," Leia said as her mouth twitched up into a smile. She turned towards him and continued their conversation. "It is to my understanding that the reason that you had taken Rey to Starkiller was for you to get your hands on the navigational chart that will lead to your Uncle Luke, am I correct?" Kylo shifted in his seat at the mention of his uncle, and Rey could feel his uneasiness. Uncle Luke? She thought. He was the one that trained him before Snoke... She remembered him telling her many stories about his training with his uncle, but she didn't know that that particular map that BB-8 had showed her was a map leading to Luke Skywalker. Was his plan to get the map and kill his own uncle? Rey's thoughts were still running wild when he spoke to her through their bond. Yes, that was my plan. Until I met you. They shared another glance and he answered his mother. "Yes, that's correct."
"And you have seen the whole map, besides the last piece, right?"
Kylo nodded. He wasn't quite sure what she was getting at. "I know you are confused and you will probably want to reject my plan, but hear me out. Will you listen?" Kylo nodded again as he furrowed his eyebrows and focused intently on her next words. "Now it is to my understanding that you can never return to the First Order, or you will be killed for treachery. This means that you will have to join our side in the battle. Are you willing to do that in order to save yourself and Rey?" Kylo looked over to Rey and met her eyes. It's okay, she reassured him. Kylo nodded and Leia continued. "Good. Now our ultimate goal and the only way that we can defeat the First Order is to seek out and kill Snoke. Since you've already gone against his orders by affiliating yourself with Rey, I would assume that you would be open to ending Snoke's life. Correct?"
"Correct." Kylo said with no hesitation. Snoke was his master once, but that monster was after him and Rey. There was only one way that they could escape him and that would be by killing him. "I understand that you two are very powerful with the Force, but Ben, you and I both know that there is no way to defeat Snoke unless someone helps you." Kylo swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat and resisted the urge to vomit. He didn't want this, but what choice did he have? His mother's right. There is only one person that is powerful to defeat Snoke.
Rey was beyond confused at this point in the conversation. She didn't really know why she was invited here, for she wasn't the one talking through any plans and making decisions. She didn't even know who they were talking about. "Okay," spoke Kylo, "What do you need me to do?"
Leia smiled and sighed with relief. "You are the only one who has seen the rest of the map, so we will show you the chart that BB-8 was carrying and you and Rey can go and retrieve Luke." Luke. They're talking about Luke Skywalker. The Jedi, Leia's brother, and Kylo's uncle. "I will show you the map tomorrow and by the afternoon, I will have a ship ready for both of you to take. Until then, I will grant you permission to explore the base as you please, as long as both of you are together. Thank you for coming in," Leia told them as the look on her face fell. Rey could tell that she was nervous that they wouldn't find her brother. Rey and Kylo both stood. Kylo made his way directly towards the door while Rey reached out and put her hand on top of Leia's. "We'll get him. Don't worry," she whispered. Leia smiled up at her and gave her a small dismissing nod. Rey followed Kylo out of Leia's quarters and into the hallway. He was walking very fast, and Rey had to practically jog to keep up with him. It reminded her of their time back on Starkiller when he would accompany her to various places around the ship.
She could sense his feelings radiating off of him, and they were a mix of emotions. He was relieved, frustrated, and a little bit nervous all at the same time. She thought that it would be best to keep quiet and mention something when they returned to the privacy of their room, so she followed behind him like a puppy.
Finally, they returned to their room and Kylo immediately walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Rey sighed in defeat and layed on the bed. What was wrong with him? How can I help him if he won't even tell me what's wrong? About an hour passed by and Rey's head was spinning with thoughts of what possibly could be the matter with him. She decided that if he wasn't going to come to her, she was going to go to him. She rose from the bed and slowly made her way to the bathroom door, knocking quietly. "Kylo? Please talk to me."
She received no answer. She tried to talk to him through their bond, but he had put up a wall so that she couldn't. Trying the doorknob, she realized that he hadn't locked the door. For a split second, she feared what she would see once she opened the door, but she did it anyway and saw him crouched down on the floor with his arms resting on his bent knees and his head on his arms. She slowly bent down beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, making his head jerk up. His cheeks were tear-stained and his eyes were filled with more tears ready to fall. He looked at her as if he was ashamed of himself, so she quickly pulled his head into her body and cradled it. He let those tears go and cried into her shirt. She had never seen him so vulnerable, and it broke her heart. Whatever it was that was bothering him made her feel so sorry for him.
After a few long minutes of her just holding him, he began to raise his head to look into her eyes once more. "Kylo, please. Tell me what is the matter," she begged him. His face contorted so that he had a somber look on his face. "Rey," he began. "I'm afraid. I've been running away from this life for my whole life, and now I've returned. I've been trained to hate the Resistance and kill anyone that has joined them with no remorse, but now I'm the one that has joined them. And I've pledged to kill my own Master," he said.
"You're afraid that you're turning into someone that you never wanted to be?"
"No. That's the thing. Now that I'm here, I'm realizing all that I've missed. I've wasted more than half of my life working towards something that I don't want to be, and now I'm here with you, and I wouldn't want to be with anyone else."
"Then why are you so sad?"
"Because there's something, something that I haven't told you. I'm afraid that once I do tell you, everything will be different. You won't look at me in the same way." he told her, casting his eyes down to the floor.
She brought her hands to his face and tilted it towards her so that she was looking into his eyes. "Kylo, you know that I could never do that. You killed your own father, someone I was very close to, and I still forgave you. I forgave you because I love you, and I will never stop."
Kylo took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he was going to tell her next. He wasn't sure how she was going to react, but he knew that she would be surprised, and maybe even angry. "I've told you stories about my training and what lured me to the Dark Side. You know how Snoke contacted me and made me trust him to abandon my training with my uncle. And honestly, I'm not looking forward to going to retrieve him because I'm scared. I'm scared to relive my terrible past, but I must face him because what is done is done. I can't change that. I can only change the future, and my future is you, Rey." She smiled at him and held his hand, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles as he continued. "Rey, you are my future, I have no doubt about that, but you are also my past." Her eyes furrowed as she took this in. What does he mean? I'm his past? "You have no memory of your past, and that is because whoever put you on Jakku didn't want you to remember. But Rey, I know about your past. I remember."
She gasped at his words and started to breathe heavily. She was so confused at what he meant, but didn't want to interrupt him. She wanted to know what he had to say, what he remembered. "I'm sure you've wondered why you are so strong with the Force. It doesn't just come to someone. It's in one's family for generations, and you are no exception. Rey, your father was a descendant of the Palpatine blood line. I know you've heard of him in those history books that I've seen you read. Emperor Palpatine. That was your great grandfather. Rey, you naturally have the Dark Side in your blood. When you were a child, around 7 years old, your father died and your mother didn't know what to do with you. She didn't want you to be a Sith, so she sent you to train with my Uncle Luke. That's when we met, about a year before I left. We bonded quickly, since we both didn't have any family to rely on. Rey, we became each other's family. You were the only thing keeping me from joining the Dark Side, but eventually it just became to much. I murdered all of the padawans except for you. I took you to Coruscant, to live with a family I knew and I erased your memory so that you wouldn't remember any of the pain and suffering that you had been through. I told you that I would come back for you but when I did, you were gone. The family that I had left you with had been murdered, and I thought you had been too. That was until Takodana. At first, I didn't realize it was you, Rey. Then, after I saw what you could do with the Force, I knew it had to be you. After all, I was the one to teach you how to resist someone probing your mind, and to turn the tables on them."
Kylo stopped speaking and waited for everything to set in. Rey couldn't believe what she had just heard. She had a family, she knew Kylo before Takodana, and she was of the Palpatine blood line. "Why didn't you tell me? Why are you just telling me all of this now?"
Kylo took a deep breath and sighed. "Luke will remember you. You had outshined all of the other padawans the first day that you begun your training. I wanted to be the one to tell you, not him. I guess I just figured that now would be the best time."
"You kept this from me. You left me with a family that I didn't know! You could've stayed with me. We could've been a family-"
"We are a family. Now. We are now a family. And you know that I couldn't have stayed with you. The pull was too strong. It was my best option and-"
"I need to go," she told him, rising to her feet. She wasn't sure if she was really mad at him, but she didn't know what to think. She needed some time alone to absorb everything that he had just told her. "Rey, wait! Talk to me!" he yelled after her as she made her way towards the door. She turned around and faced him. "I just need some time alone. Please don't follow me," she begged him as she walked out and closed the door behind her.
Kylo sat down on the bed and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and pointer-finger. He was afraid that she would react this way. He knew that the best thing to do was to wait for her to think about everything until she was ready to talk. He would wait a million years for her. Oh Force, I've got it bad.
It was night time and Rey had still not returned. Kylo was getting anxious and considered going out to look for her, but he knew that he wasn't allowed to. He didn't think that breaking the rules would give his mother many reasons to trust him to not go and kill his Uncle Luke. He decided to stay in their quarters and just wait for her to come back.
Rey still had not returned and Kylo was beyond worried, but he knew that she was probably okay. She might have decided that she didn't want to stay with him, so she could be in Finn's room or his mothers. He decided to get some sleep, since he would need it for the journey tomorrow, but he knew that he would not be getting much sleep. He took a shower and got into bed wearing nothing but his boxers, and he tried to drift off to sleep, but he couldn't. His thoughts would not stray from Rey, so he laid there and thought about her for the next couple of hours. He tossed and turned, but sleep still wouldn't come to him. He listened to the silence that the base had to offer, in which he appreciated. He never really was surrounded by silence, and he loved it. That was until he heard the door to their quarters creep open. He shot up in bed and stumbled onto his feet, making his way out of the bedroom. He saw Rey standing there, and he couldn't make out the expression that was on her face. She walked closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, making him sigh with relief and hug her back. "I love you. We may have a past that I don't know about, but everything that happened, happened for a reason. We are together now and I couldn't be any happier. I need to stop worrying about the past and focus on the future. You are my future, and I love you so much," she told him before reaching up and planting a kiss on his lips. He paused, only to say a short "I love you," back, and they continued their kiss, it getting more heated and passionate by the second. Kylo scooped Rey up and carried her to their bed, laying her down gently and returning back to her mouth.
"We are meant to be together. I lost you once, but we found our way back to one another. I will never stop loving you," he told her as he took off her shirt. He was right. He wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight.
*Author's Note*
Well, Rey is a Palpatine! Next chapter we will meet the mysterious Luke Skywalker. It should be out by Friday. Please leave a review!