Interdictor

Rey thought she would never set foot inside one of the First Order star destroyers again. In fact, she had sworn on her life before that she wouldn't. Ah, promises. She crossed one chrome alley after another, drinking it all in.

The décor of a morgue with metallic walls shining red and blue from the computers went nicely with hundreds of corridors, sterile air and dust free floors. The ship was as surgical as it was menacing.

"This is going to be different." Kylo held the door for her to the spacious quarters.

"How? Same ship, same evil men on it."

"Not the same – the class is, but it's not the…" one you had been captured and tortured on, while we were fucking like rabbits and I tried to extract the map to Skywalker from you.

Kylo slicked his hair back. "It's not the one on which you've been before. This is Interdictor."

"I have a bad feeling about this." Rey said. Where did those words come from? As if she had heard them before, spoken to her, for her.

"Don't listen to your feelings." He extended his hand. "Just come. This is the safest ship in the entire Order Starfleet. It's mine to command."

Rey swayed on her heels. "So, you're like a captain here?"

"Exactly 'like' a captain." His hand started to throb, but he wouldn't drop it till she took it.

"Aaaand," she bit her lip. "They have to obey? All of them? What you say is the law, right?"

"Fifty thousand people live and serve on this ship. Every one of them is mine to command."

Rey wiggled her fingers in between his large ones, and brushed his skin, only so. Her eyes got that mischievous spark in them Kylo recognized immediately. "If I disobey you, captain, will there be a punishment?" She asked in a husky voice.

Kylo seized her hand and pulled her into him. He gazed down on her face, spearing her with a look of utter concentration. Rey's heart started beating faster, as if on cue when he looked at her like that. His nostrils widened and she saw every pore of that pale, smooth skin. He scorched her earlobe; she breathed in a minty scent of his breath.

"If you disobey your captain, he will tie you to the bedpost."

She closed her eyes. His body pressed into hers, but he didn't have to move a muscle; didn't have to speak or look. He simply was and that warped her insides; that made her head spin and mouth dry up.

"Really, captain?" she mustered the energy to squeak. "Then I'll escape. Just like I did when…"

Kylo watched her mouth open and her eyes gaze into his chest, but seeing nothing. Shit. No doubt those fucking woods and knights hunting her like an animal were running through her head. That killed the mood. He pressed closer to kiss her, but suddenly, stopped.

Rey woke up, craning her head to look at his face. "What's wrong?"

"I felt it."

"Felt what?"

His palm glided over Rey's mini bump. It was so mini, that she couldn't call it a bump. It was a bumplet, a look of a bloated belly on a skinny girl. But it was there. She placed her palm on his.

"You're imagining things. It's sweet you think you felt it, but at this stage, it's like a peanut." Rey quipped, remembering the word from her talk with Finn. Ouch. Pang of guilt jabbed her in the ribcage.

"I did feel it." Kylo stepped back from her entirely, and she missed the warmth of his body. "I felt it in the Force."

Rey gasped. "What? How? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"I… I don't know." I do, but I'm not gonna tell you. "You – you don't feel it?"

Rey squeezed her bump gently. She felt the cotton fabric of her shirt and the protrusion where a set of chiseled abs once used to be. "Yes I feel," and then, a loud growl escaped her stomach and Rey chuckled. "I feel hungry, apparently."

Kylo laughed and kissed her, but internally, he groaned. This wasn't good. Or at least it was strange. A father shouldn't have established deeper connection to a child than a mother, especially since she was the one carrying it. The concentration of the Force inside her must have been astonishingly high.

"Kylo," Rey rested her head sideways on his chest. "That man – the one who tortured me, he's not here, is he?" She heard the leather crinkle, and without looking guessed that he had closed his palms tightly.

"No. You will never see him again."

And he was right. Her stay on the ship was different.

While before, Rey had had to be confined to his stupid chambers, now, she could roam the ship freely. No one stopped her, no one bothered her - no one even looked at her; and that was perhaps even worse. She felt lonelier than in her AT-AT torso; licking the plate for one and playing with sand.

She would sit on the observation deck and watch; just watch the officers in ironed uniforms zig zag through the ship. Voices mingled, commands and reports of the analysts created a singular melodious rhyme which Rey started to learn to distinguish.

A female analyst spoke into the headset. "Cruising in the Mirrin sector thirty degrees west of the moon; one O-L-P one requesting pulling of the hypermatter reactor core in the stand by position, repeat, requesting pulling of the hypermatter reactor core in the…."

"Release the propulsion system, we are ready to jump."

She bent her knees and rested her chin on top; tucked in her hidden spot by the glass panels. She felt like she knew the ship. She used to salvage from these destroyers on Jakku her entire life. This felt different, though. What she had known was but a hollow corpse of a dead spacecraft; and here, she was sitting in the beating heart of it.

"I don't like when you're out there so often." Kylo said one night, scraping the razor against his chin.

Rey was braiding her hair which had grown quite a bit. "You don't like me doing anything. You think this matters to me? It goes right from here," she pointed at her left ear, "to here." She poked her right one.

He eyed her mirror reflection, tapping the razor against the sink.

"What?" she asked, trying not to swallow a bobby pin between her teeth. "You said you're the captain. What can happen to me here?"

"Anything can happen. For all your skills and reflexes in fight, you're a klutz most of the time. You have the worst luck in the galaxy. You can trip and fall, you can open the ventilation shaft while trying to call a droid, you can…"

Rey rolled her eyes, finishing the last twist of her plait. "If one of us ever trips, it's you. Your legs are too long for this ship anyway."

Kylo pressed a warm towel against his face and wiped the rest of the foam. They were staring at each other in the mirror. Surreal came to mind. She was wearing white pajama bottoms, too big for her frame, and a white T shirt. He wore only black pants, and stuck his massive bare chest out. Rey knew he was teasing her.

She punched him in it.

"You," he threw her over his shoulder and Rey screamed and kicked, till they collapsed on the bed. His kisses tasted like soap and aftershave; and Rey couldn't stop brushing his smooth, fragrant skin. He touched her stomach before falling asleep. They didn't address it, ever. In fact, they rarely talked about it at all. Rey knew he wasn't one for big declarations; but that slight pet of her mini bump was his way of saying goodnight to the kid.

Time flew by.

Interdictor made one rotation after another, and one night, Kylo found himself caressing a big lump under her shirt. "Six months along," he thought. That meant in three, he would get to meet his child, his little …He smirked.

"Oh come on you bastard!" Rey propped herself on her elbow in bed. "Tell me if it's a boy or a girl! It's not fair that you know and I don't."

"I'm glad I caught myself thinking before you poked in my head. I'm not gonna tell you. You have the Force, figure it out. Better yet – start trying in our lessons and you'll know right away."

Ah, the lessons. Ever since they had crashed on the destroyer, Kylo had been insisting on doing the "mind exercise" with her.

"I'll be gentle." He seated her in some octagon chamber, too dark for her eyes to see anything but vague outlines on the wall.

"What will happen?" Rey took a deep breath.

"I'll try to access your repressed memories in the Force. I might see things you have seen, but don't remember it, like your family."

Her breath hitched. "You mean who left me on Jakku?"

Kylo nodded and sat on a chair opposite to her. Their knees were touching, and Rey felt so small against his big body. He was looming over her like a teacher, a king on the throne. Kylo put his hands on his knees and sat ramrod straight.

Nothing moved.

The air seemed dead.

She registered the humming of the engines put on standby. She felt her pulse in her ears, and adjusted her eyes to the dimness of the chamber. Rey couldn't bear the intensity of Kylo's gaze. His scrutiny unnerved and called to her at the same time. The room became hot and her forehead covered in droplets of sweat. She would wipe them, but she feared to move. Kylo didn't. While Rey squirmed and wiggled her behind on the hard chair, Kylo wouldn't move an inch – he didn't even blink.

"The hell…" She muttered imperceptibly. She didn't feel him as in the mind probe once before, when he had sought the map to Skywalker. This felt weird. He was just staring, and she could drown in those two-colored eyes, in the way his nostrils flared and his thick hair hung in waves around his inert face.

As if he wasn't physically there with her; as if his body was, but the mind had deserted it. Suddenly, an invisible force pressed Rey to the chair.

She winced. Her back hurt already from the pregnancy, and now, she would have another nice bruise. Shit. Did he mean it?

"Aaarghh," she growled. The pressure rose quickly; then ebbed a bit, then rose again. It pulsated in her as a tumescent turbine pumping water. "Kylo, stop it."

Nothing. He might not have even heard her.

"Please, enough!" Rey clutched the armrests, but couldn't unstick her back, fighting that force with all she got. "What are you doing? Let me go, stop it!"

The world went black.

She didn't lose consciousness, only a sense of time and space. She heard a voice, or rather, she became the voice, shrill of a woman who screamed something into the void. A heartbeat was drumming in that place, and Rey hit the wall.

"It's fine, it's all right." Kylo's face hovered above her, picking her up from the ground. How did I end down here? He gently supported her head and raised her up.

Rey shoved him. "What the hell was that? You will never get to do that to me again, do you understand?"

Kylo took in her shaking form. "I'm not going to apologize. It's the only technique that works. You want to know, don't you?"

Rey gaped at him, unsure whether to kick or punch or yell at him. "No, if I am to be minced like this, I don't want to know. We're done." She spun on the heel and darted to the door – even though she had no idea in which part of the ship they were, or how to get to their quarters.

Kylo Force pushed the door. They wouldn't open.

"This is too much, Kylo. Let me out." She stomped.

He ambled towards her, not looking concerned at all. "You're making a mountain out of a molehill. You're not even trying." He hit a barrier in her mind – a thing of horrors he hadn't expected. Whoever had raised it knew what they were doing. That told him a lot. She was left on Jakku by a powerful Force user; and whoever left her, might want her back one day. Great, add another bastard who might want to take her from him, apart from Snoke. He needed to know, he just had to; and if a bit of pain and discomfort got in the way, she'd just have to endure it.

"I am trying!" Rey cried.

"Try harder!" he raised his voice. "You're not even opening the connection. Is it your damn fear again? Do you even want to know where you came from or not? Are you happy being a scavenger?"

"How dare you! Of course I want to know. Why are you so obsessed? Why is it so important to you to know?" Her voice trembled. "Is it because you're ashamed? You don't want to have a baby with just a scavenger, is that it?"

Kylo sighed, digging the heel of his palms into his eyes. If only I could tell you. Snoke was expecting him to end her; a scavenger he was "using", as far as he had lied to his master. Kylo needed to see how to train her. He had to know where she came from; what power she possessed, how to protect her.

"Of course I'm not ashamed. How the fuck can you even say that?"

"Well, how the heck can you treat me like this? I don't care about me, but if this somehow hurts her," she pointed at the prominent bump, now snug against her beige shirt.

He blinked, eyeing her shaky finger, an accusatory point aiming at the baby. "Her? How do you know it's her? Can you finally feel the connection?" He asked hopeful.

Rey smiled. "So – it's a girl, then?"

Little minx tricked me. "I…I didn't say that." Smooth, Kylo.

"But is it?"

"Ask a medi droid."

"You know very well you sabotaged them not to tell me. How weird, that their protocol has been overwritten not to reveal the sex." She surged at him, balling her fists.

Kylo congratulated himself internally. He was a devious bastard when he wanted to be, and he found Rey's aggravation at this detail mighty amusing. "It's not my fault you can't talk to the baby." He examined his gloved hand casually.

"Yeah, like you can, fetus whisperer."

"Of course I can." He said in the typical tone of a male wounded ego. "We talk all the time when you're snoring."

"Am not!"

"You are. I can hardly get a decent sleep with you."

"The you're welcome to get out, sleep alone and go fu-"

"Ah-aha-ah…"he caressed her temple softly. "Language. A child is present."

Rey just gaped at him, in utter disbelief of his cheek. "You are such an asshole."

"Am not!" he mimicked her previous protest and burst out laughing, when she lost it. He lived for the moments like these, when she crossed her arms and the bump looked so funny, and he breasts bigger than the usual handful. He licked his lips at the sight of them, but wouldn't torture her any longer. Kylo knew when she had had enough, and the bulging veins on her neck and face colored scarlet indicated that she had. "Come on. Sorry…I'm sorry, all right?" He grabbed her, mid-way to the door.

Damn, she could hold grudges. They were lying in bed later that night, once a passionate nest of sin turned to a mute ship sailing to the "I'm not talking to you" harbor.

"You still angry?" he planted a kiss on her shoulder.

"Don't talk to me, droid murderer."

Kylo snorted. If that was the worst nickname she had for him, bless it. He had done things far, far worse than hacking one stupid droid in his life.

Rey was lying spooned in front of him, her head resting on her palm. He joked about it, but it really did bother her. What kind of a mother couldn't feel her own baby in the Force? She could read Kylo's mind when he was on the opposite side of the destroyer. She sensed thoughts and fears of the officers; the names of their pets and kids when they had lost a train of thought. She could see colors when it was about to rain, and hear whispers when the night shift ended their rotation, and thousands of people were falling asleep.

Why not the baby, though? Why not someone inside her that was hers and his?

Kylo heard her inner monologue as his own. He screwed his face. Fuck me. He had no idea it was this important to her. In the end, everything was. Things no one gave a shit about mattered to Rey, sweet, precious Rey; too good for this fucked up galaxy.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind, whispering. "Anakin says you're not to worry. He can't sleep, then."

"Ouch!" she darted up, panting in pain.

"What?" Kylo turned her and checked her in a millisecond. "What is it? Are you in pain? You need a medi droid?"

Rey was breathing loudly, exhaling and inhaling through her mouth. "No, no, I'm… it kicked, but it was different. It was so strong and it hurt me." Was it the name? No, she shook her head; that was absurd.

"I'm calling the droid."He tried to untangle from the blankets and clamber to the com console.

She grabbed his arm. "No, it's not necessary. It's gone now. But I swear this hasn't happened before. It felt strange." Only after half a minute, Rey gasped. "Anakin – what? A boy? A little boy?"

Kylo was still recovering from the heart attack she gave him. "Huh?"

"Don't you dare lie to me again, you ass. You said the name for a boy, so…?"

He couldn't resist that sweet pout and gleam in her eyes. "It's a boy." Kylo would remember this moment forever. He didn't have to hold his child in his arms to feel him, to see the unconditional love in his mother's eyes. He became more tangible after this revelation. He gently combed her hair back and smiled.

"Where's the name from? Anakin," she asked. "I kinda like it."

"It's…just a name. Forget it. We're not naming him that. I was just teasing." He felt like an idiot. He wouldn't name his son after an icon he worshipped. Not because Vader turned dark, but because Kylo would be jealous of his own offspring. No doubt, a product of Kylo Ren and Rey – whoever she was – would be a power source; the most powerful conduit of the Force imaginable. Name him Anakin, and his rise to greatness might overshadow that of his father, and that was something Kylo couldn't get over, not now and not in the future.

"Ben, then?" She bit her lip.

"Never."

"We can't name him Reymond, so you better think. I want it to be after us, something important to us."

He kissed her, feeling the Force course through her; as if a dormant cell awakened. Rey lost herself in his embrace and the warmth of his soft lips. She brushed his hair, the part of him she adored to tease and tussle and tug, in the heat of passion. "Thanks for telling me." She nuzzled his nose.

"You're welcome." He nuzzled it back, finally able to do these sickly sweet things with her without feeling stupid. It took him weeks after he had first met her to kiss her and actually feel something. He never meant it, or so he thought. It took another month for him to wake up and watch her sleep content in his bed; without having the urge to fuck her sensless. When did the gratification of her body change into that indescribable feeling of…something? When did it all go wrong for him?

She fucked him up. A girl from the desert junkyard fucked up a dark, vicious Knight of Ren.

It was a fact.

He could still be all of those things. He still killed and seized one planet after another in the name of the First Order. His knights still hunted the Force users all across the galaxy. He would still spear Skywalker with his lightsaber, looking the bastard in the eye before he let out his final breath.

But at the end of the day, he'd come to her and kiss her like this; and it wouldn't matter to him, that he was a killer and a monster. He would hold onto her, even if she protested.

They were standing directly at the tip of the arrowhead, in the narrowest point of the star destroyer, overlooking main bridge. Interdictor was anchored next to a blue planet, as if only the ocean everlasting covered it. "Can I go with you, just once?" She was sending him off, her hand resting on her belly.

"Not this time. It's too dangerous."

Few days later, a green, elliptical star halted their path and Kylo was readying his mask to go. She was leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed. "Can I go now?"

"You could, but there's a third class atmospheric pollution in the reports, and you don't wanna endanger the baby, do you?" He kissed her forehead, threw over his hood and left. He would never let her visit one of the worlds they descended on. Not for her own safety; that bit was just partially true. He wouldn't have her see things he had to do there; things she wouldn't believe because she loved him. But he did them; precisely because he loved her. He killed whoever the Order wanted; tortured whatever faction Snoke commanded, just to keep his head down and not attract attention to him and Rey. He still hadn't figured out how to snake his way out of this, with Rey and the baby unharmed, and him – preferably alive.

"Sick of these corridors, I'm sick of the deep space." Rey kicked the bedpost in their quarters. She was lying on her back with her legs high in the air, stomping on the bedhead. Not only did her back ache like crazy, she felt disgusting and bloated and her ankles were swollen. On top of it, she gobbled up three times more food than normally, and then, she felt sick.

She needed to feel the sun rays on her skin. She longed to take a dip in the river, or a lake; eating fresh fruit plucked from a tree. Rey loved stars, but the space offered only so much she had enjoyed. Humans were earthly creatures; they belonged to the soil, not the stars. Only after death, she would rejoin the cosmic soup, not in life.

Idle thoughts were poisoning Rey. She rolled off the bed and pulled out the navi disc Finn had given her ages ago in the bazaar. Press me, press me. It called to her. What could happen, right?

So, she did; and soon, she had small Finn hologram gaping at her in her palm. "Rey! Gods… what the hell? Where are you? Ren took you, I know because Poe told me."

Rey hissed. So, we're skipping the pleasantries. "I'm safe, Finn. I'm with him. Don't worry about me. Is Poe OK?"

"Yeah. Had a pretty nasty bump for a while, but…that's not important. Do you wanna come home or not? Give us the coordinates and we'll get to you."

Home.

"I'm fine here."

"Here where?" he put his hand on his hips, glaring. "There's a lot of things you don't know about. Leia is dead. Luke Skywalker is now waging the war against the Order. He's the leader. The Knights and that beast, Kylo Ren, are overtaking the territories in the neutral buffer zone; slowly pulling the scales on their side. He's a vicious killing machine, Rey. Just so you know who you're fucking at night."

Rey dropped the disc. Little holo Finn flickered in the air, but then the graininess stopped and the image smoothed. "I..I…"

"Yeah. They're hunting Sith artifacts, trying to kill every last Force user in the outer rim. It's bad, Rey. Real bad. But you just close your eyes and don't let me disturb your idyll."

"I won't have you talk to me like that, Finn. Stop it and let me help you. What…" she clutched her thigh with her free hand and positioned the navi disc so Finn wouldn't see her belly. "What can I do? I'm on a star destroyer. I can get you information."

"Logs. We need travel logs and maps to track the charter. We don't know where they've been, what territories are loyal to the resistance and what have been overtaken. I mean…if you can. Don't risk your life for us." He said coldly. As if this Finn and the one from the bazaar were two different people.

"You don't have to worry about me. I see you don't mean it. And I'm not risking my life for you. I'm doing it to protect him as well." She spat, pressing the button without saying goodbye.

Damn it. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She had to make Kylo see reason. Not at once, no. He wouldn't listen to anything if she forced it on him. She had to plan carefully and open them a way out to the resistance. The Order was evil, and she would steal those logs to help the good guys win. Maybe in the future, the resistance would remember. She and Kylo might have a small chance of making it out alive, and if they would, the world needed to know that a monster had helped, once.

Rey forbade herself picturing the fate that awaited Kylo, if he survived and the Order lost. No one would punish her – for what? Loving the beast? But he… he would be killed, or tortured for information and then, his corpse tossed aside. Mobs on Coruscant pulled down the statues of the Emperor before his dead body even cooled. Knight of Ren would go the same way. Maybe this little favor for the resistance might buy them some mercy. Maybe Finn and his friends would be willing to raise their son if Rey and Kylo were dead. Maybe…

"Tomorrow night," she whispered, tucking the navi disc away. "I'll try it tomorrow night."

A/N What now? The plot thickens. Also yes, she is six months along now, slight time jump for narrative purposes. Hope you enjoyed :)