Rey wakes up alone. Blinking her eyes open as she wiggles her fingers and toes and assesses what hurts. She's surprised to find it's nothing. She looks around to find she's in a hospital bed again. Then, she hears someone speaking.
"My boyfriend's older brother's best friend did a short stint at the Leader's command bunker. He says Leader Snoke called this princess his daughter. Sometimes she would even sit on the old Leader's throne in his place when he was busy."
"Really? She looks so young for that."
Someone has pulled the privacy curtain around Rey's bed so she can't see the speakers. It's two women and that's all she knows. Oblivious that she is awake, the women continue with their gossip. It's all about Rey.
"I thought that Kylo Ren was the Supreme Leader's son. That's what everyone says. Does that mean this princess is Kylo Ren's little sister?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I guess so. Ren is very interested in her recovery. Smath has us sending all of our reports to him."
"Yeah? So what else did this guy at the bunker say about her?"
"Ooo, I was just getting to the juicy part-this princess was General Hux's girlfriend."
"She is-was Hux's girlfriend? Oh, the poor girl. I guess that was Hux's baby she lost. No wonder they are keeping it off the official records. He's supposed to be a traitor now, haven't you heard?"
"Tara, Armitage Hux was no traitor and you and I both know it. But yeah, if Kylo Ren's sister had a love affair with General Hux and got pregnant, it's no wonder they want to keep it quiet."
"I'm not sure I believe it. Everyone knows that Ren hated Hux. He would never have let his sister anywhere near Hux."
"Oh, it's true. Supposedly, this princess sat by the general's bedside everyday while he recovered after the Starkiller. Hux was terribly wounded and it just wouldn't heal. He was in and out a bacta tank for months. Everyone saw her walking the general up and down the hall for his rehab. Apparently, they were very much in love. Everyone knew it but Ren."
"Oh, that's so sad. She and Hux are secret lovers and then she loses him and then her baby. Wow . . . that's just awful."
"Yeah . . . it is. I always liked General Hux. I loved those speeches."
"Me too. So . . . how did she get hurt? The records just say from a fall."
"That's the best-er-worst part. Hux didn't turn traitor like they're saying. That's a lie, Tara. Hux tried to run away with his princess. I guess maybe because she was pregnant? Kylo Ren caught up to them and killed Hux."
"Wow. But that sounds like him. Ren hated Hux. Oh, wait—don't tell me Ren did this to his own sister? Did Ren hurt her?"
"No. She fled after Hux was killed. The guys who transferred her here said she was hiding in the Rim on Jakku. They found her alone, wearing rags, and living in an old ship."
"I don't blame her for hiding. She was probably scared what Ren would do if he learned she was pregnant. You know, given he had killed Hux already. Are you sure all this is true?"
"Absolutely, Tara."
"Poor girl. Who's going to tell her about the baby? Is it Smath?"
"No. We're supposed to page the bridge when she wakes. Kylo Ren wants to tell her
himself."
"Oh, geez. Hasn't she suffered enough?"
Rey takes a deep and ragged breath as she stops listening. Her baby girl is gone, and that's all that she has really heard. The baby must be dead from the fall, she surmises. The medics who initially treated her had warned of this risk. And it had come true.
Rey feels tears well up and start to meander down her cheeks. Is she sad? Is she relieved? Is she scared? She's a little of everything right now. The baby she hadn't wanted had been lost just as she had begun reconciling herself to the idea of motherhood. The accident had occurred just a day after Rey had learned for certain of her pregnancy. Only minutes after she had decided to leave Jakku and to return to Kylo with her news. And now, she wakes lucid for the first time in a week to learn of the baby's death. This has all happened so fast that neither her mind nor her emotions have caught up with the events.
Her life feels very out of control.
"May the Force be with you, baby," Rey whispers as she reaches down to her belly. Then she sniffs loudly and it draws the attention of the women.
Tentatively, one pulls back the privacy curtain. "Are you awake, my lady?" Yes, they can see that she is. "Let us help you sit up," the other suggests as she steps forward. "How do you feel? Are you in pain? Tara, hand her a tissue please. And some water too."
"No. No, thank you." Rey waves away the tissue and their help as she swings her legs over the side of the gurney. She must be healed, for she would never have been able to make that movement while injured. Tentatively, Rey puts one foot down and then another. Then she stands up as the two women look on warily, looking ready to catch her if she falls.
But she doesn't. As Rey stands there, testing her balance, she asks blankly, "Where am I?"
"The medibay of the Finalizer orbiting Coruscant," comes the reply. "We are paging Kylo Ren now. Ren wants to speak with you." The woman who tells Rey this has such a sorrowful look to her face that Rey can tell she is expecting the worst. And now, Rey is too. She hasn't seen Kylo since Hux had dragged her away from the bunker. A lot has happened since then. This baby is just the latest of many losses, Rey knows.
"We'll stay with you until he dismisses us," one of the medics assures her as she gives Rey's arm a quick, encouraging squeeze. The woman is trying to comfort her, but the medics' clear skittishness has Rey unnerved. Is this just the normal fear that accompanies the mere mention of the erratic and fearsome Sith? Or do they know something Rey doesn't know?
Two minutes later, the masked man himself comes stalking into her room to loom over Rey standing naked beneath her voluminous hospital gown. Rey takes a half step forward. Part of her wants nothing more than to hurl herself into the safety of Kylo's arms. To cry her eyes out on his chest and then open her mind to his so that Kylo can see in her memories all that has transpired and she won't have to talk about it. But something about his body language stops her cold. Even with his mask on, Rey can sense that there is a confrontation coming, and not comfort.
Kylo sees her teary face and draws the obvious conclusion. "You already know."
"Yes," Rey answers simply. She resists the urge to give the two gossipy medic women a resentful glance. Blaming them might provoke Kylo to violence, Rey fears. The two women are standing at rigid attention in the far corner of the room now that Kylo Ren is here. They are doing their very best to be invisible.
Rey looks down now and stammers out, "The baby is d-dead."
"Thanks to you," comes Kylo's instant and brutal rejoinder. Rey glances past him at their audience and sees both women cringe at his words.
She turns away. "Don't start, Kylo." She's not in the mood for some ugly scene before witnesses. She is still so heartsick over Army and confused about how to feel about the loss of Snoke and the Skywalker twins. And now she's even more confused about how to feel about the loss of this baby. Rey has had less than five minutes to process the news. She can't take Kylo's drama just now.
"Smath tells me that you are fully recovered for the most part. There is no permanent damage to you, at least." Rey winces at the potent anger behind his words. The blame.
She shakes her head and pleas again, "Don't start. Please don't start with this now, Kylo."
But he's undeterred. Kylo rips off his mask to toss it on the bed she leans against. His voice has a nasty tone she has only heard once before back on Kardura. That's how angry Kylo is. "Rey, we are talking about this. Now."
"The baby is dead! Let her rest in peace," she whirls to face him. Throwing up her hands in frustration. "What's left to talk about?"
"You can start by explaining what the fuck you were doing on Jakku while pregnant!" he explodes as only Kylo Ren can. His face is contorted with wild emotion. Rey senses waves of anger, despair and hurt pouring out from him in the Force. Is this all for her and the baby? Or is there more to this? Rey isn't sure as she watches Kylo rage at her. It's almost like a dam has burst and a tide of penned up emotion is flooding forth from the Sith.
"You never should have been there in the first place! You should have been at Vader's castle where none of this would have happened! You would have been safe and that kid would be alive! But instead, you insisted on Jakku! Fucking Jakku!"
Reflexively, Rey is defensive and guilty. Her voice is small and her shoulders hunched. "I wanted to go home, you knew that." He had even once promised to take her back home. Kylo knew how much Jakku had meant to her.
But apparently, he thinks that shouldn't have mattered any longer. "Jakku is not safe! For anyone, let alone a pregnant woman! And this time there was no excuse of a family to wait for. There was nothing for you on Jakku but danger, Rey."
"There was freedom!" she hollers back, her temper now flaring to match his. She is indignant that Kylo can't understand why Jakku was so important. "I was Snoke's prisoner daughter long enough, Kylo. I wasn't about to be your prisoner too."
"Prisoner?" He is offended by this term. "You are a Sith princess, Rey. Pampered and protected and privileged in a way a prisoner never would be! Had you come to the castle, you would have been treated much the same."
Whatever. She's not going to argue the point. Rey sighs and wipes at her eyes as she thinks of what might have been. "I meant what I said in my message. I was coming back, Kylo. I was going to tell you about the baby. But then the cable broke and . . ."
"And another dead Skywalker!" Kylo finishes for her. It's indiscreet but Kylo doesn't seem to care because he is livid. And rejected, she realizes. Kylo is hurt and feeling rejected by all of this. And feeling so alone, she senses as she gets the briefest flash of his unguarded mind in the Force. "Every single one of us dies!" Kylo rasps out bitterly as he runs a hand through his hair. Gods, he looks bad, Rey realizes. Like he hasn't slept in weeks. "This Skywalker didn't even live long enough to be born . . . thanks to you . . . "
"It was an accident!"
Kylo disagrees. "There are no accidents for Force-users. No accidents for Skywalkers."
"Yeah?" Well, two can play at this blame game, Rey thinks. Because she too is hurting and wants to lash out. "Maybe you're right and it wasn't an accident. Maybe it was the Force! Tell me, Darth Ren, did you hear nothing Snoke taught you about balance? About how the Force will strike back at you if you tip too far to one extreme?"
It's not a rhetorical question, she's waiting for an answer. He scowls and gripes, "What are you saying?"
"First, you kill the last Jedi and then you start slaughtering innocents on Coruscant. Killing your way to victory again like you did in the Mid Rim. Like you did with the Starkiller. So Dark you are, Kylo Ren! Too Dark! The Force will not sustain it." She eyes him resentfully as she gets to the point. "Have you considered that maybe you are why this baby is dead? That maybe the Force would not allow this child to live to follow in the footsteps of the monster Sith you aspire to be?"
Kylo looks dumbfounded and sincerely threatened by her words. Clearly, this has never occurred to him. "No." He steps back and shakes his head solemnly. "You're wrong, Rey. The Force is with the Skywalkers."
Rey rolls her eyes. "The Hell it is! Where was the Force when Army shot your mother to death? Where was the Force to save your uncle? The Force has failed to protect your family yet again. And maybe, there's a lesson there." Rey dares to speak heresy to the Sith: "Kylo, has it ever occurred to you that the Skywalkers are the problem and not the solution? That maybe four generations of this family is enough?"
His eyes flare wide at her words and then narrow. "We are the Chosen Ones," he growls at her, spouting the romantic prophesy he so fervently believes because he was raised on it first as a Jedi and later as a Sith. "We are born to rule the galaxy and born to rule the Force."
Rey ignores him. "We get the holonet on Jakku, so I've followed your invasion. I've seen your bloodbath. How many people will be consumed by you and your family's wars? The galaxy can't take another Skywalker-don't you see? The Force wouldn't let the baby live to be born."
"That's not how the Force works," he scoffs. Apparently, now that he's head Sith, Kylo thinks he is the foremost authority on the Force.
Rey begs to differ. "That's how balance works! That's how the Force rights itself slowly over time. It's a rough justice, our Master always said. When the tide turns, it is not always fair and it's often abrupt. But it matters. Open your eyes, Kylo!"
He stares at her blinking and silent for a moment. Then, he is petulant. "Suppose you're right-so what? There is no one left in the Light! I have no peers left to challenge me," he boasts.
"There is me."
Her words stop him cold. His mood changes yet again in an instant. As usual, it's hard to keep up with this Sith's quicksilver emotions. He looks at her incredulously now, searching her face with alarmed eyes. "Are really we back to this? Are you my enemy, Rey? I thought we were past this." He steps forward now to lay hands on her shoulders. "I thought you were mine. After that night in the bunker, I thought you were mine, Rey—"
"You mean the night Snoke gave me to you?" Rey shrugs him off angrily as she recalls the raunchy, passionate night their baby had been conceived. All along, she has been manipulated by the Sith for their own ends, Rey realizes. Kylo has an angle and a motive for everything, including sex. Maybe Darth Plagueis had too. She wonders now whether the old Muun had known she might conceive that night. Had another Skywalker been his plan all along? "Army told me about your reward-"
"I didn't force you," Kylo overrides as he grabs for her again. She's in his arms now as he holds her close to whisper low in her ear. "I would never force you." His voice is husky and intimate. Rey feels a shiver down her spine despite her anger. Because that's how unsettled she gets when Kylo is this close. "I remember that night," he rasps, his breath on her cheek. "I live for that night. For you and for your Light."
"Stop it, Kylo," she struggles against him. Then she gestures behind him to their forgotten onlookers. The two women medics have already seen and heard far too much as it is.
"Leave us," Kylo belatedly barks at them and they flee the room. But he keeps pressing with Rey. "I need you. Now more than ever, I need you, Rey. Can't you see how much I need you?" Kylo has moved on from blaming her about the baby and now it's all about him and his needs. "I don't want to be alone. Be with me, Rey. Be might Light. Be my wife—"
"Stop it!" Rey succeeds in pushing him back. She raises a weary hand to her temple and steadies herself. "I'm sorry, but I can't do this, Kylo. Not anymore. I just can't."
"What do you mean?" he demands.
"This—" she gestures back and forth to them. "Us! I can't do this, Kylo. I can't be with you," Rey wails as she succumbs fully to tears. "Whatever you think we are, whatever you want us to be, it will never work!" And now there's no baby to guilt Rey into trying to make it work. There's just needy, overbearing Kylo being his usual dramatic self and Rey is over all of his selfishness and casual cruelty. Me, me, me . . . he wants, he needs, he feels. Well, whatever. Rey is not in the mood for placating him right now. She's newly woken up from a horrible injury to learn of her miscarriage and she's worried about herself now and not him. It's an old lesson from Jakku: take care of yourself first before you look to others.
Rey is ugly crying now, a sniffing, teary, hiccupping mess. "Look, I'm s-sorry for all that has h-happened. Sorry for Snoke and for your uncle and for your mother and . . ."
"For Army Hux?" Kylo sneers. Rey looks away. But Kylo must see that he has scored a hit because he won't let it go. Now that he's found something new to fight about, he latches on. "Did you love him?"
"What does it matter now?" Rey wipes at her eyes. What does any of this matter now?
"It matters! Did you love Hux?" Kylo demands loudly. "Answer me! Would you love me if I were Army Hux?"
Rey glares back at him. "I don't know what love is. No one has ever loved me." And, damn, how it hurts to say those words aloud. A fresh batch of tears starts to fall. "Army tried to tell me that he loved me. But I cut him off . . . I wish I hadn't done that . . . "
"I will love you, but you won't let me! You keep pushing me away!" Kylo howls. He raises his hands in frustration and then drops them in disgust. "You gave your body to me but your heart to him! Don't think I don't know that, Rey!" His face looks so pained as he looks down on her. "You leave me first for the hope of your family on Jakku. Then you leave me for Skywalker and the Resistance. Next, you cheat on me with Hux and run away to Jakku-"
"I never-"
"Oh, I know you never slept with him. But you loved him. And that's worse!" He waves a gloved finger under her nose. "You were supposed to love me! To be with me! Our Master promised you to me!" He is shouting now and it doesn't matter that they are alone. The entire Finalizer medibay can surely hear him. "I was the one who found you! The Force brought you to me!"
Me, me, me. It's more of the same from the petulant, selfish Sith. This man is exhausting. "Stop it, Kylo—"
"I am your Master now," he declares. Suddenly, he's every bit the autocrat Sith the galaxy fears and not the vulnerable, romantic private man she knows. "You will go to Vader's castle. You will wait for me there. And when this war is over, we will marry and I will teach you the ways of the Force."
Rey gapes at this high-handed presumption. First he blames her, then he makes a pass at her, and now he's ordering her about. How does he think he can get away with this? Because he is Sith, Rey realizes. Kylo Ren does and says anything without impunity. That's what it means to be Sith. You can do whatever you want and there are no consequences. Because once you hold the power, you make the rules. And the little people of the galaxy like scavenger Rey are supposed to stand there and take it.
Rey has heard enough. She bursts from the room. Stumbling into the crowded but silent public area of the Finalizer's shipboard hospital. Everyone has been listening and now everyone is turned to look at her. Standing there with tears and hair streaming, barefoot in her hospital gown. And an angry unmasked Kylo Ren hot on her heels.
She whirls and her voice is low and intense. "You are so fucked up, Kylo! You and your entire family are fucked up! And you are fucking up the galaxy with you! I won't be a part of this."
Kylo ignores her words like he ignores their large audience. He stares her down with the intensity only a Sith can muster. "His last words were of you. To find you and to pass on the Force and find balance. Because you and I are the future of the Force."
"The Force! It's always the Force with you Skywalkers," she complains in disgust. Kylo is no different from the rest. Romantic dreamers all. Well, Rey is no romantic. She's a realist. And looking at the angry Sith man-child who wants to rule her and rule the galaxy, she has had enough. "Well, I quit this whole Sith princess business. I quit the Force and I quit you, Kylo Ren! We're through!"
"What?" He blinks at her in shock. "You are a Palpatine and a Force-user, Rey. You can't quit who you are," he scoffs.
"Why not? You did, Jedi Ben Skywalker Solo," Rey delivers a low blow. She's from Jakku and she's not above fighting dirty. "Or was it Ben Organa Solo? I forget."
"You don't get to quit the Sith," he warns before adding, "I need you, Rey. The galaxy needs you too." He looks especially exasperated now. "Stop pushing me away! You push people away—do you see that? You lived feral in an AT-AT so long that you keep people at a distance out of habit—"
"Oh, and you're some sort of people person, Kylo Ren? Is that it?"
His retort is a sneer. "I forget-you don't need anyone but the desert, do you?"
"Oh, stop your whining, Kylo! You always said you wanted to be as strong as Darth Vader. Well, congratulations because now you are." Her sarcasm turns ugly and it's very unlike Rey. But the stress of the situation is overwhelming her now. She's every bit as reckless, angry and hurtful now as Kylo. Every bit as Dark. "Grandpa Vader would be so proud. You're just as much a mass murderer as he was. Hosnia stacks up well next to Alderaan any day-"
"Rey," Kylo's voice has a dangerous edge to it. "Darth Vader was not a mass murderer and I am not the villain in this war-"
"Tell that to Coruscant, Darth Ren! Tell that to Hosnia! This is what you wanted all along, right? Well, enjoy it because-"
"Princess." The voice is quiet but carries, and its cultured inflection is instantly recognizable. Rey whirls to find old Milo hovering over her shoulder. He is the Supreme Leader's personal representative to this crowd, but Rey knows him as a longtime henchman for the Sith. He's come to fix things like he usually does.
"Milo," she whispers. And her face floods with shame. Something about old Milo's staunch dignity and unwavering devotion to the Skywalker clan makes Rey ashamed to be caught like this. Standing barefoot in a hospital gown screaming hysterically before dozens of onlookers about very personal matters of the Sith.
But Milo's countenance is kindly as ever as he nods at her. "Princess, you are in shock from your ordeal and not yet recovered from your injuries. Let me help you back to your room, my lady. We should get you off your feet. You need rest." His voice is soothing to tamp down the aggrieved emotion of the moment. Part of Rey is grateful for his interruption and the reprieve it brings. This argument has fast spiraled out of control and Rey doesn't know where it is headed.
She doesn't protest as Milo takes her hand and begins to lead her away. But she doesn't get far. Rey takes maybe four steps before glowering Kylo freezes her in the Force. Because whereas Milo's efforts to diffuse the confrontation are tactful verbal maneuvers, Kylo defaults to his usual blunt aggression. When the Sith reaches her side, he waves a hand before her face. Rey instantly slumps into his strong arms as everything goes black.
