Merry Christmas!

Chapter 29

Sidious

Finn pounded through the burning ship, BB-8 on his heels. He had wanted to blow the ship, he hadn't expected it to be this big, though. He skidded to a halt, seeing from afar the sight of Koita Mathe rushing through the enflamed ship with a body…

His heart skipped a beat. No, it wasn't a body! Rey!

He flinched forward, but as quickly as he did so, a thought speared his mind: where was Master Ren? He would never, never, allow anyone but himself to carry Rey off like this without him being at least behind her, eyes always upon her. Finn panted, the heat searing through his robe. BB-8 zinged protest, nudging him whilst beeping rapidly.

Finn looked down at him, his heart aching. "Get back to Rose," He commanded. "Tell her to keep an eye on Koita Mathe!"

BB-8 almost jumped backwards. And where will you be?

"I've got to go somewhere," Finn swallowed, "Hurry!"

He watched the rotund droid speed off, unfrightened by the banging of bursting fuel lines and roaring fires. Finn inhaled, then closed his eyes.

The Force swirled around him, making him feel the firy world around him like a food market rather than chaos. But where was the one he sought? Where was Master Ren?

He gasped when he found his light within the Force. Once a blazing beacon that could have guided ships, was now a waning candle flame. Something had definitely happened to him. Something that he had warned about. Finn opened his eyes and bolted full speed down the corridor that the Force directed, willing contact between him and Rose.

Rose, He urged, Get Beebee-Ate and run! Meet me by the Command Bridge and run! Leave the Knights of Ren alone and run!

He shook off the Force in time to nearly break his neck tripping over the body of a Knight of Ren. He lifted himself onto his forearms and looked around. Bodies, all dressed (well, with the exception of the one cut in half) in Knight Black were strewn about, lightsabers still in their hands.

Only one body moved. His shoulders shivered as if he was crying, and muffled words came from his corpse. Finn scrambled to his feet and jumped over the corpses, stopping only to kneel over Master Ren's body. One of his hands lay reaching out, gripping the tile, and the other clutched his side that bled out into a pool beside him, his entire body hiccupping tears as he wept with abandon upon the floor. What words Finn could hear, were incoherent, but "sorry," was certainly one of them.

"Master Ren!" Finn exclaimed, placing his hands on his shoulers. "What happened?"

Finn moved to lift him, but only allowed an outpouring of blood to seep from his chest, the hot ooze leaking over his fingers.

"She's… gone," Master Ren cried, his nails scratching the tiles as though he was still trying to reach for something that wasn't there.

"I saw that!" Finn told him, looking around at the bodies. "Master Ren, what happened? Why did you let him take her?"

For the first time, his tired, soaked brown eyes met Finn's. "They… I, turned against them. I chose…" He swallowed hard, "Her."

So that was it. Finn could see Master Ren's color in the Force (if the ethereal shifting of the Force could be simplified to mere colors) had changed. It was a lighter blue, a softer tone, a stark contrast to his previous crimson red spotted with black. He changed for Rey, and what was worse, he made it public among those whom he loved. Clearly, they didn't agree with his choice.

"Master," Finn began, though including the usual surname didn't feel right, "We have to get you out of here."

Master Ren shoved him with enough strength to offset Finn. "Go!" He bellowed. "Get out of here!"

Finn did a double take. "Excuse me?" He demanded.

Master Ren pressed his cheek against the tiles and exhaled, his body seeming to deflate in his anguish. "You, you're getting married. Go and be with her… while you still can."

A portion of Finn's mind wondered how he knew, the other three quarters told that one to shut up. "You're giving up?!" Finn demanded. "After all the two of you have gone through? After all the crap you put me through getting to Rey, you're just going to give up on her?"

"I! CAN'T!" He winced, and turned his face away from him before finishing in a softer yell, "Protect! Her!" He inhaled sharply, his words echoing in the room around them. "I can't protect my family!"

Finn crawled to him, his muscles taut with rage and hissed, "So let your family protect you."

That earned a turn of the head and a single brown eye rimmed in red.

"Your family is just like mine, Ben!" Finn told him. "It is chosen! There aren't many of us with blood relatives left. That is a luxury that we can't afford! You, are the older brother I've never had! The one who's more handsome, more qualified than I am! Even with the wife I always wanted, you are my family! You see this!" He fanned his arms out to the bodies on his left and right, churning his fury as he moved, "You came at them with the best you've got! But guess what, that failed! We've all failed, Ben! So let your family help you. And I will be damned if I let you die here alone, while my sister, your wife, is left in their hands!"

Master Ren shifted his body, his hand moving to cover his wound better. He swallowed, "The wound, needs to be cauterized."

Without hesitation, Finn asked, "Where's your lightsaber?"

"Broken," He said breathily, his pallor turning a sickening shade of white as he breathed. "Koita Mathe… find Rey's."

The move was so natural, it took Finn a moment to realize that he was doing it. He had extended his arm in a sturdy limb as strong as the hardest metal. He knew Rey's aura, could feel it in his sleep. A little speck of her was nothing. He waited, feeling that speck grow until it slapped into his hand, a long piece of metal that could detach at the wielder's whim.

At once, Finn ignited it, the searing ivory light illuminating his face.

"Don't impale me, please."

SWSWSW

Ikher Dawn

Poe rushed through the ship, his emotions teetering on joy at the entire First Order High Command fleet had been wiped out, and despair at the news coming from Rose's quick transmission. Rey! The Indominable Rey, taken?

He opened the door to the MedBay and halted, seeing the shirtless Kylo/Ben lying on his back as a surgical droid operated on his wound. It wasn't seeing him incapacitated that made Poe freeze, it was the entire feeling of rage that emitted from him.

To his right, Rose gasped as she stood, clutching a wrapped stomach with one hand and Finn's shoulders with another. A thousand questions bubbled upon Poe's lips, but one look to BB-8 and he swallowed them. They had been outnumbered, and though they had a phenomenal teacher in Kylo/Ben as well as Rey, Finn and Rose were no match for the Knights of Ren.

Poe cleared his throat, summoning a zombie-like rise out of Kylo/Ben as he sat up and kicked his long legs over the side. "What happens now?" Poe asked.

Finn and Rose looked up at him, then turned as one to look at their master. He sat, his fingers digging into the mattress as the surgical droids worked on him. He looked up from beneath his mussed hair, the feeling of deep, unease emitting from him.

"Ahch-To," He growled.

"Is Rey alive?" Poe asked, shifting his weight.

"Yes," He answered. "She'll live until the baby is born. That, is our deadline."

His voice brooked no argument. His eyes held within them such intensity that Poe was reminded of rocks that claimed oceangoing vessels along their sharp, and deep spears. There were no questions to be raised. He was going to regain his wife, come hell or high water.

SWSWSW

5 Months Later

Nest II

Koita Mathe would not be still. He stalked through the halls of the ship, barking orders at the apprentice knights and even the children. Rana, his nervous apprentice, was knighted properly, but had little to say about her Master's behavior as of late. His only solace came in the hours when he would enter the Supreme Leader's quarters, spending his late hours there whilst no less than six guards were posted outside.

No one was allowed to enter the Supreme Leader's quarters except for a handful of servants designated for entering and leaving. Shifts were strictly kept, and no one spoke of what happened inside or, outside, of those opulent rooms. The one who did cross those barriers was Koita Mathe, when and if he desired to inform it's prisoner.

On that day, Koita Mathe sauntered into the Supreme Leader's quarters, sweeping passed the black furniture emptied of it's delicate and otherwise harm-inducing ornaments, and stepped up into the master chamber, seeing it's sole occupant chained to the bed by a heavy shackle around a silver, gleaming mechanical leg. She lay as she always had since her stomach had swelled, arms crossed under her bosom and face turned away, out the balcony where she had, once, tried to throw herself off of. Koita Mathe took his place on the bench at the foot of the bed, sweeping his eye first on the heavy shackle, then to the beautiful woman it was secured to.

"Good morning, empress," He cooed, studying her face.

Rey said nothing; She usually didn't. She was dressed in a simple, light black gown with an embroidered red and gold overcoat. Her stomach was too big to cover with the buttons (there had once been a tying cord), but she was beyond caring about modesty. Her hair had been pulled back to better keep the illusion of being well-kept, but Koita Mathe -and most importantly Rey- knew that it was a lie.

"You didn't eat your breakfast," Koita Mathe told her, flicking his eyes to her untouched tray.

She sniffed, refusing to look at him, though he caught an eye twitch to her food.

He sighed, "I'm surprised the baby hasn't disagreed with your starve tactic, this time."

She turned a disgusted eye to him, and set her jaw.

"You know you must take care of the," He paused. He wanted desperately to call the baby by it's true name: the Pure one, but Rey would rather starve herself to death than let that prophecy come true of her baby. "Little One," He decided. "What are you craving today?"

He let her eat whatever she pleased. He might not be privy to procuring children, but he knew that the art of pregnancy caused the body to crave peculiar items. Rey's were bacon and chocolate served atop juicy, roasted meat, and an absolute revulsion to garden peas. Some people grumbled, but not too loudly. They wouldn't dare with Koita Mathe.

She exhaled through her nostrils, making them flare as her eyes narrowed. "Before this baby is born, I'm going to kill you."

Koita Mathe couldn't help but smile. "Now that, Empress, is something I would love to be privy to."

She tightened her hand into a claw, a move so quick Koita Mathe couldn't stop her. But he certainly felt what she did. A vice clapped around his throat, cutting off his oxygen in a decisive gasp. But, much to his delight, the move only lasted a few seconds as Rey let out a cry and shifted in her bed, rubbing a hand over her stomach.

Koita Mathe inhaled deeply, doing his best to keep his chest from rising too high, to keep her from having the satisfaction of getting to him.

"That's right," He gasped. "Use the Force, lose Ben's baby. What is most important to you, Empress?"

She shot him a look of such pure hatred, he could feel it. He stood, a lithe movement despite the attack, and stood over her. "I'm ordering you a hearty Midday. Be a good girl and eat it."

She leaned up and bared her teeth at him, "Rana says you want to marry her, why would you marry a girl who still thinks she's a child?"

He looked at her, taken aback from this gathering of information. He had only asked Rana two days ago to consider marriage…

"She needs to grow up," He told her softly. "This will make her realize that she's been a woman for many years now."

She seethed, "Or it will kill her."

Koita Mathe couldn't help himself. He sat down on the edge of the bed where her feet had previously occupied. He leaned forward, almost close enough to kiss her, and whispered, "Does it kill you to know that you are a widow? That your husband abandoned you to me, then died most unceremoniously upon the Sidious?"

She smiled, but the look in her eyes was hollow, cruel even. "No," She whispered.

"Why not?" He asked, inhaling the smell of exotic flower oil upon her skin.

"Because I may not be able to use the Force, but you can." The glitter in her eyes returned. "You, you've been restless, and put everyone on edge. You can't explain why, or see the future as you once did. You don't know why, do you?"

Koita Mathe watched her, his body tense as he shook his head.

"Because my husband is alive, Koita Mathe. He's alive, and he is coming for me. Him and my family. They are coming for me and my baby will know it's father."

He opened his mouth to ask a question, to ask how could she "know" such things without her ability to use the Force, when the ship shuddered beneath his boots.

He turned his back on her, sending the Force about, feeling for disturbances. Panic, overpowering the peace of order upon the ship. They were being attacked!

A glint of silver crossed his eyes and he leaned back, blinking, only to feel Rey's breath come in a heated fury upon his ear, and the pounding thump of her metal foot against his back as something cold wrapped around his neck.

"This is how you die!" She screamed.

Koita Mathe grabbed at his throat, but the chain was designed to hold fast. He lifted his hand, determined to use the Force against her as he had in the past when she attacked him, but it was useless, somehow! He rocked back and forth, trying to dislodge her, or gain some breath to sustain him, but it wasn't coming.

He fell onto the bed on his side, trying feebly to roll over her, but her feet were well practiced and refused to allow him the satisfaction of life. It dawned on him in those last moments what she was using, what had escaped his detection for so long because it was itself, undetectable: the Dark Side of the Force. She couldn't use the Light Side as it appeared to be protecting her baby from her depressions and her attempts at suicide, and so found peace within the Dark Side.

The last thing Koita Mathe saw during his time in the Galaxy, was Rey unwrapping her leg chain and with a solid yank!, freed herself, and took Koita Mathe's crimson lightsaber.

SW

Finn and Rose were unrecognizable to anyone tracking their progress as Jedi. They slew their enemies as though they were paper, even the hardened Knights. It was easy with Master Solo's training, and easier still to have him fight in a flurry of brown and white robes in the walkway parallel to them, seeking the one whom he desired like a drowning man's next breath.

He turned, hearing a noise and… feeling something. He couldn't say what, exactly. But he knew that presence, that call within the Force. He rose his lightsaber, a stunning electric blue crossblade made from the second crystal that Rey had saved, and brought it down across the chest of Rana, Koita Mathe's apprentice, sending her to the ground with the smallest of smiles, before looking over the edge of the balcony.

He hopped onto it, shedding his brown cloak as he did so to reveal pure white robes and looked across the ship, seeing Finn and Rose jump likewise onto the balcony edge. Without a second thought, he leapt over the edge, landing on his feet and waiting whilst Finn and Rose laned and began clearing the way for the one whom he waited for.

She came, dressed in an elegant red and gold robe with a thin, nearly translucent black gown. Across her face, the blood of a stranger dripped, and behind her, the chain that must have held her prisoner.

Ben stood shivering from the sight of her, his white robes stained with red and burn marks. Around him, balls of orange light burst and descended into small stars dying as the Resistance flooded in, destroying what they could. He moved forward, his hair sticking to his face and neck, his blue lightsaber still ignited. He swallowed, watching her approach him, sucked in a vacuum that belonged only to them.

They meet in the midst of the chaos, lightsabers spitting and buzzing. Ben is the first to turn off his lightsaber and immediately took Rey by the waist, taking his time to rub his free hand over her stomach, savoring how big it had gotten. She looked up at him, a hardened face though he remembered every facet, every curve. He leaned forward and kissed her, the colors of their garments intertwining to create one bold color: gray.

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