Raw, Untamed Power

The desert stood still, eerily calm. The wind whistled softly, but it was so faint that it was almost imperceptible. There were only two sounds dominating the atmosphere: the roar of the impending Tie Fighter, and the sound of Rey's breathing. In, and out. In, and out. She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly to calm her racing heartbeat. She could feel him approaching. The strength of their Bond was so much stronger now that they were actually seeing each other in person without light-years and planets separating them. It had been so long… Rey closed her eyes and Leia's voice came to her head. Be patient. Trust your instincts. Trust the Force, Rey. Rey steeled herself and deftly unhooked Luke's lightsaber from her belt. She held it to her side for a moment, motionless as if she was waiting for something. As soon as Kylo's ship appeared on the horizon, the engines screaming, she ignited her saber, the blue blade humming in anticipation.

Kylo could sense her. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her presence as strongly as he could feel the vibrations of his ship and the controls under his fingers. His TIE Silencer skimmed low above the ground, leaving clouds of sand swirling through the air. The ship was perilously close to the ground, and a lesser pilot would surely have crashed their ship by now. But Kylo was the grandson of Anakin Skywalker, and the son of Han Solo, the best pilots in the galaxy, perhaps only rivaled by Rey.

Rey. He could sense her fear, but she wasn't backing down. Kylo didn't know why he kept accelerating towards her, it was as if he wasn't in control of his own body. All of the painful memories associated with her came rushing back to him. The scar on his cheek, his hurt at her rejection, the frustration he felt with her, it all came down on him so suddenly that he was filled with an incomprehensible surge of rage. His gloved hands shook as he pushed the controls to their limit. It was as if he had tunnel vision, unable to see anything else. The Silencer picked up speed and every second that passed brought him closer to the beacon of light in front of him.

Rey was terrified, but calm at the same time. She turned around and crouched into a lunge with a determined expression on her face. Her face was calm as if she already knew what was going to happen as while she slowly stole a glance over her shoulder. A curl blew against her cheek as the wind whipped past her. His anger, his frustration, his strange urge to kill-she wasn't sure what to make of that-but she could feel all of it. His presence was so much stronger in person and so much more potent. But Rey pushed that aside to focus on the present, on the ship that was bearing down on her.

She waited as the ship got closer. Closer, closer, and...now! Rey flew into a sprint, running as fast as she could. The roar of the TIE's engines was deafening and she could feel the wind from its speed on her back.

Kylo was confused, why was she running? But kept accelerating, his body movements automatic and stiff as he ignored his cockpit's display lights flashing issuing a collision warning.

Right before he reached her, it was as if a presence had been lifted off of him. Wait, what was he doing? But it was too late, the TIE was already upon Rey.

Rey waited until just the right moment when she had gained enough momentum and just before Kylo's TIE ran her down, she called on the Force and leapt up into the air.

Below her, Kylo craned his neck to follow her trajectory, momentary shock freezing him in place.

She gripped her lightsaber firmly as she flipped upside down between the cockpit and its left wing. It almost felt as if she were in slow motion, every detail stood out to her, from the varying thickness of the clouds of dust underneath and behind her, the way the bright sunlight glinted off of the TIE's metal, or the heat from the engines as she flew past them with mere inches to spare. She thought she saw Kylo's face or his mask, but she wasn't sure. Time seemed to slow and she let her instincts take over, to trust the Force. She saw her arm reach down, and cut through the metal of the ship, shearing the left wing off from the cockpit. Then, the moment passed and she landed back on the desert ground, completely unscathed.

The controls and displays in Kylo's ship were flashing and beeping loudly. He had been so distracted by her surprising display of power, that he didn't realize what she had done until it was too late. He cursed, struggling to regain control over the ship. The metal groaned as the wing broke apart, leaving the ship unbalanced causing it to spin wildly. The other wing broke soon after, leaving the spherical cockpit tumbling across the sand before it crashed into a dune and exploded in a burst of fire and debris.

Rey watched from where she stood, still in the position she had landed in with shock across her face. The ship broke apart piece by piece and the cockpit tumbled into the desert ground by itself. Her heart froze when she saw the fiery explosion. Her eyes widened as she tried to comprehend what that meant. Was he dead? That would have been a good thing...right? But Rey's legs wobbled and she nearly crumpled to the ground at the idea that she had killed him. Her brain felt like it was about to explode from sensory overload and a massive amount of confusion, but her heart carried no such qualms. She didn't want him to die. Kriff, she desperately hoped she hadn't killed him. A pit of dread grew in her stomach but she had no time to think of it further.

"REY! REY!" she heard Finn scream. She whipped around to seem him pointing frantically at the sky. "They got Chewie! They got him!" Rey lifted her eyes to see a transport taking off and her eyes widened in horror. No, no, no, no, no. It was another ship taking off from the desert, taking someone she loved away from her. No, she would NOT let them take Chewie from her. In pure desperation, she shot her hand out and called on the Force to stop the transport.

Kylo ripped off his helmet and tried to suck in a breath of fresh air, but his lungs filled with smoke from the burning remains of his ship. Kriff, he was an idiot. What the hell was he doing?

He climbed free of the wreckage, batting at his clothes to extinguish the fire. When he was finally free from the blasted ship, he gasped and filled his lungs with fresh air, coughing to dispel the acrid smoke.

What the hell was that? It was as if an uncontrollable rage took over him, a rage to kill. He was shaking and when the next realization hit him, he nearly fell to his knees as if he had taken a blaster bolt to the chest. He was relieved that he hadn't killed her. He was glad that she was alive…

He hadn't been lying to her when he said he didn't want to kill her, and his gut wrenched when he realized how close he had been to killing her. The frightening thing was that he had wanted to, even though everything in his body was telling him the opposite.

But if the dark side was giving in to one's desires, it was starkly contrasted by his reckless impulses, and not to mention his mixed feelings for the scavenger herself… What did he desire? Power? Control? Or did he just want the scav-no. He stopped himself before he could finish that thought. Thinking like that was dangerous and distracting. But Kylo could no longer deny or hide his confusion that was not only in his head but in his heart as well.

He felt a sharp tug in the Force, and he looked up to see Rey straining as she tried to pull down a flying transport. He was shocked and impressed with her display of power, but he would not let her have it. It didn't matter who was on the ship, she could not have it. An idea came over him, to see if she would lose control, to show the darkness that she was trying so hard to deny. Acting on instinct, Kylo reached out with his own hand and pulled the transport to him, stopping its slow descent.

Rey's eyes widened as she felt him across the desert. He was alive. Before she could process how she felt about that, the transport suddenly stopped its descent and started tilting in the opposite direction. She tore her gaze away from the sky to see Kylo emerging from the burning ruins of his TIE, and saw his hand reach out to rip the transport away from her. No, she couldn't-she wouldn't let him have Chewie.

Rey strained as hard as she could and her thoughts flashed to Leia. How she would tell her to calm herself, to trust the Force. But as soon as she thought of her master, she lost concentration and the ship dipped closer to Kylo. Rey couldn't feel anything except for the overwhelming terror that washed over her entire body. Her fear of losing Chewie, for her friends, for Leia. She was becoming angry, but it suddenly felt easier to pull the ship down. So she drew on it, ignoring the warnings that flashed through her mind. She called on all the pain in her life that she had felt. From Unkar Plutt's vicious beatings, her parents' abandonment, the gnawing hunger she endured nearly every day of her life, the fear she felt for Chewie and her friends, the crippling pain she felt when she saw Han Solo die, and the anger and frustration that she held for herself, and her anger that she held for Kylo. Her anger at her conflicted feelings where her brain was tugging one way, the right way, the logical way, but her heart was telling her something completely different that felt so wrong but so right at the same time. She hated that he made her feel like this, and she drew on that hate.

The ship twisted in the air between the two Force users, the metal creaking, and the engines groaning. Rey's hand shook from the effort as beads of sweat rolled down her face. Kylo was standing still, his face etched in concentration. Rey screamed in frustration as the ship twisted more and more in the air, not going towards one particular side or the other. It was as if they had reached a stalemate.

Rey's eyes flicked to Kylo and at the sight of his infuriatingly calm composure, a flash of white-hot anger bolted through her. It traveled through her spine, her chest and her stomach, and it burned all the way down her arm when suddenly raw, electric, terrifying power burst from Rey's fingertips.

Burning-hot arcs of electricity and power shot from her hand and wrapped around the transport. The blue tendrils of lighting greedily latched on to every part of the transport and everything inside, living and nonliving. After a moment, the ship exploded and Rey's arm was thrown backward from the force of the explosion. Kylo also drew back, stunned.

Rey looked down at her hand in absolute horror and then back up to the burning debris raining down from the sky. Every being aboard that ship had been reduced to ashes, destroyed beyond recognition. Rey desperately reached out through the Force. There were no life forms left on the transport.

"CHEWIE!" She screamed in such agony and desperation that the intensity of her pain rolled off her in huge waves through the Force. But it was too late, she had killed every living being on that ship. She could faintly hear her friends' cries of despair. Rey's entire body shook with horror and grief and she felt such a powerful sense of despair that she felt like she was drowning. She wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground right where she stood.

"Rey!" She turned around, tears streaming down her face to see Poe yelling from the ship. "We gotta go! They're coming!" She looked in the direction where he was pointing, and sure enough, the familiar roar of TIE fighters filled her ears as they appeared on the horizon.

Rey could barely hear Finn calling her name as she looked at the burning transport again.

"Chewie…" she whispered in utter despair. She looked at her shaking hand and her breath was quickening and she couldn't seem to get enough air into her lungs. Rey looked up and saw Kylo staring at her in shock. At that moment, Rey wasn't sure if she wanted to scream at him and hit him, or run to him for comfort. Finally, when Finn screamed her name one last time, she snapped out of her grief-stricken trance enough to run towards Ochi's ship.

All Kylo could do was stare at Rey's retreating figure in shock. But he wasn't upset with this new outcome. That terrifying power, it was from the Sith. Rey had used power from the Dark side. She was almost ready to turn.

Then, he thought of her gut-wrenching cry. So it had been the Wookie she was trying to save. His father's first-mate, and best friend, Chewbacca. He waited for the satisfaction of his death to hit him, but it never came. He felt hollow inside, and despite his efforts, he couldn't help but remember that there was a time when he had called the Wookie, Uncle Chewie. His chest tightened and he clenched his fists as he stared at the burning debris of the ruined transport.