Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 12: Kingdom / Epicentre
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
For Darkness, Stars
Chapter XII: Kingdom / Epicentre
I asked myself was I content,
with the world that I once cherished?
Did it bring me to this darkened place
to contemplate my perfect future?
I will not stand nor utter words against this tide of hate.
Losing sight of what and who I was again
- "Epicentre", VNV Nation
...
Darkness eddied around her — the thickest parts making the dream feel like she was drowning; so real that when she opened her eyes, the world that stretched before her was unlike anything she'd ever known or even thought possible. There was a familiarity to the black stone beneath her feet — its shined surface reflected her pale features back to her.
It reminded her distantly of the cave on Acht-to, but that's where any similarity ended. Rey looked up, finding herself on a hillside cresting over a merciless and sweltering valley. Niches in the rock bubbled red; cracks in the planet's surface revealed it's burning, molten core. Lava ran in flows off the cliffside, bleeding into a river that circled the expanse. As black as ash. A world both dead and fiercely alive at once.
It felt real enough to seem as if she'd been there before: distant, but sincere inasmuch as she could tell that the vision wrapped her gently, waiting for her to accept it as a possibility to consider — a future uncertain that it might yet happen. Unafraid, she stepped to the edge of the cliffside and saw that her garments flowed around her, lifted by a wind that was as warm as the air standing still. Ash flurries dusted the ground.
The sky was similarly painted, the clouds scorched, and all around her, she felt potential, power seated just beneath the planet's crust. Nothing would grow here, but when she placed her fingers on the ground, she could feel the warmth radiating from beneath her — volatile with possibility. Alive. Waiting for her to break through — to feel for herself what such power might do by those who could wield it. And beneath that, deeper, something more: patient, ancient, and resonant… waiting for her. Rey drew back her hand and found that the coloring of her garments had changed. No longer the dun-colored wrappings she'd used on Jakku as a matter of function in the arid desert climate, but black to match the shadowed landscape around her as if she'd partaken of it, and it of her.
The air burnt her mouth when she breathed it in; left her nostrils prickling from the heat.
"Where am I?" she thought.
A whisper brushed the shell of her ear and Rey turned. Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed rather than saw that this wasn't all that there was to this place. Searching out whatever stirred her senses — whatever she was meant to see — she found that a figure drifted through an enormous set of doors behind her. A blink and she caught a glimpse of a robed man, brown hair settled on his shoulders. Dark eyes and olive skin.
Come and see, he seemed to invite her.
She gasped, her gaze straining higher and higher as she took in the spires of a fortress that loomed overhead. In another blink, the hem of his robes disappeared as he retreated inside. Left momentarily with only a feeling — Rey pressed a hand to her chest, her mouth cottoning at the roiling power that trailed him. A force wielder, though she could not tell: light or dark, perhaps both — so strong that the hair raised on the back of her neck. Then that too vanished, beckoning her to follow.
What waited beyond those doors thrummed with power. Hesitating, Rey knew she was meant to follow — that this was an invitation rather than a demand, and she was free to remain should she choose, but hesitate too long and she would rescind the opportunity. It was the sacrifice of things: sometimes hesitation carried the greatest cost. She wasn't certain, but she thought she sensed where it might lead: deeper into the planet's core to the vaults below the massive castle, and further still to where an unimaginable force stirred in the caves beneath. Rey gasped, having never felt anything like it — such strength, such raw possibility, such fire — a power that could change the universe. It crackled in her fingertips, making her nailbeds burn in a way that she discovered she rather liked. It felt like strength, this aspect of the Force: it felt like endless possibility.
The rise and fall of her shoulders tightened with tension as Rey moved to take a step after the man with the shaded eyes. She felt the first subtle shifts of the Force around her as a hand descended on her shoulder — a warm weight that she felt to her core, gentle but firm, and familiar.
Rey looked back, finding Ben considering her with a look that warmed her belly. The gooseflesh rose on the exposed skin of her arms as his fingers trailed to the three inches of skin between her wrappings and shoulder, his thumb stroking a small circle — knowing that such a small gesture carried an intimacy that only those who understood each other in the small spaces where they found themselves alone would know. Three inches of skin that he'd claimed for himself so easily. He touched her like he'd done it before, and she'd liked it.
His mouth softened, the ghost of a smile turning fierce with pride as he gestured to the vast, burning, churning planet before them — and beyond, to the distant stars that spun to their deaths overhead, their light long diminished before they fell.
"Ours to rule," he said, drawing her to him so that the press of his chest into hers joined the twin beats that lingered there. His hand slid down her arm to her waist, the heat of his palm through her clothes lighting a fire in her skin — hotter than the lava flows that sparked and sputtered below on the burning plain.
His thumb grazed her chin, cupping her face with a gentleness that stirred an old ache — a yearning so great that, even with all he offered, she found the one thing she longed for more than anything fluttered to stillness as Ben descended, tipping her chin as his mouth claimed hers.
—
Rey gasped awake to darkness, the thick humidity blanketing her with more surety than the thin covering that draped her. Starlight spackled the sheets that had tangled around her legs while she dreamed. She blinked, not understanding the distant night sounds of a world she did not recognize — a world painted in the blue and purple night-blooming hues of an ancient, tropical jungle.
Croaks and caws and grinding insect noises filtered into a darkened room where she found she was sprawled on an enormous bed, its numerous pillows flung to the floor and to the foot of the various posters that held a canopy aloft above it. Lumped with decadence, soft, and stretching in all directions.
A pool of sweat dampened the sheets below her.
Panting, Rey blinked into the dark, waiting for the shapes of the room to resolve themselves into something recognizable. Something familiar. In her mounting distress, her heart fluttered in her throat. Her skin was flushed, hot to the touch, but not with fever — the ache in her side remained a dull throb that reminded her of freshly knit bones and sinew still struggling to regain their strength despite the med droids that had obviously seen to her injuries.
How long had she been out?
How had she arrived here?
Where was here?
The dream fogged her mind, a sharp intake of breath muddling things even further when, she realized with a touch to her lips, that the dream felt like more than fancy. It felt much like the Force vision she'd had of Ben weeks ago, but with the particulars filled in: Them. Together. Again. But — Rey shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to rid herself of the feeling that not all was right with the Force or with her or the various scuffs and bruises and pains her body was wracked with, and beyond all that, even as her fingers trembled against her mouth, she found herself trying to hold that sensation there as it faded.
A kiss.
His kiss.
Such a simple thing even when faced with the possibility that she was destined for something so tangled; a future intertwined with impossibilities she wanted nothing more than to reject. She knew of that power; she'd felt it in the cave on Acht-to. She'd felt it wedged against the light, tempered but ever-present. That she'd touched it felt like… it felt like the dark side knew her too; like it had turned its attention to her, and now they were familiar somehow. Acquainted.
Her arms, free of their wrappings and bandaged in places, prickled with gooseflesh that bled into a shiver. It hadn't scared her then, and it didn't scare her now, and she wondered distantly if it should —
Her fingers trembled as she raked them over her hair, touching her face, then gripping her arms to ground herself back into her body. Her left shoulder gave a twang though she didn't recall being hit. Rey shook it off, trying to recall the details before they faded: There was another — a different man whom she did not recognize though she strained, a familiarity to him that she felt in her bones. He'd wanted her to follow him into the fortress — but, to whom did such a black place belong?
A breeze tumbled over the stone balcony, pushing the heady scent of flowers and waxen leaves wet with dew into the room, and Rey looked into the night outside; at the moons hovering over a shimmering, black lake and towards the ruin of a castle that she'd recognize even if the First Order had taken measure to obliterate it. She stared, uncertain, but allowing a picture to become clearer as she filled in the blanks with memory.
A turret of stone here. A reinforcing wall there.
Slowly, the remains of an old statue revealed itself in the gloom as her eyes adjusted to the night. It had stood in front of this lakeside refuge for a millennia or more, its arms spread in benevolent welcome to all those who might seek shelter in the castle walls.
The first time she'd seen green. The first time she'd seen so much water — as if there would never be enough in the world.
A sound drew her attention to her right and down to the lumped mass occupying the other side of the massive four-poster bed. Rey stilled completely, her heart seizing once in a skip of surprise that she wasn't alone. She knew it to be impossible — she knew that whatever this was, it was surely the cruelest of jokes that she should find herself here, injured, but alive, on this planet of all places — beside a sleeping Ben Solo.