The stench of death assaulted her senses.
Ajan Kloss swarmed with fleets of the New Order. AT-AT walkers thundered overhead like herds of cattle, their armored bodies toppling whatever was unfortunate enough to lie in their path. Soldiers swarmed, troopers of all varying ranks and personalities made tracks. A resounding din of their blasters assaulted the air, taking down her comrades in the back as they tried to run away.
Rey was horrified.
Poe was the one to shake her out of her momentary trance, both hands gripping her shoulders and giving her a firm shake. "Go find Finn!" He ordered, already backing away with all intentions of joining the fight. A blaster was taken from the holster at his hip, pointing back in the direction they'd come. "Get the kids out. First priority is getting out of here, then we'll make contact, find a mutual meeting spot. Go!"
Wordlessly, Rey pivoted on her heel and ran back through the bay door, narrowly dodging a blast to her shoulder. It smacked against the door behind her as it closed, the loud hissing being the only indicator that someone had shot at her at all. She was too lost in her own panic to think about anything else, all attempts at reaching out to Ben were left unanswered.
He was still blocking her out.
"Finn!" She called, bursting through the door that led to their makeshift training room, scanning around for any sign of her friend. They were all gone.
"Finn!" The words were pushed through the compression in her chest again, bated breaths expelled in panicked gasps. Eyes wide, sweat beaded on her forehead, and ran down the back of her neck.
To her relief, he answered her, emerging from the back room, bursting through the open door way in just as much of a disheveled state as she did. "Rey, thank God! Are you alright?" Selfishly, his concern left her with a grim satisfaction after the complete radio silence that had settled between them the last few days.
No, she couldn't think about that.
"I'm okay! Where are the children?"
"Rose took them. She said that she was going to take the first flight out of here and move them to a safer location. She asked me to go with her, but I told her that I was going to stay behind and help take care of the others."
Grim satisfaction indeed.
"Poe is outside. They're coming from everywhere!" Rey jerked her head and the two were running down the hallway, their feet pounded against the ground with a resounding clunk of the material, bursting through the bay door just as she had with Poe moments before.
It really wasn't a nightmare.
Rey twirled her lightsaber in a vicious motion, jerking it through the plastoid composite that made up a Stormtroopers armor. It elicited a scream that echoed across the jungle, one last painful cry as her heel dug into their knee to keep them down. One hand grabbed for the blaster in their hand, a nearby crunching of the forest underfoot signaling another intruder.
She aimed the blaster behind her. With one distortion of light, it planted itself in new flesh. A crumple at her feet assured her that she'd been right on target, wrenching the saber out of the body. She slipped it around and plunged it through the throat of the victim she held, one vicious twist and they went still.
Shoving them forward into the dirt, she rushed over to Finn, looking much worse for wear than when she'd sent him off with a few moments prior. Rey's hair was coming undone, and she took no attempts at fixing it for the moment. "Are you okay?" She reached up to grasp his face, inspecting his bleeding nose with a soft grimace.
Finn's expression faltered into slack relief at the sight of her. He lowered his blaster, brows knitting. More muffled, popping gunfire sounded around them, the booming march of invaders shook the encampment- a hot glow slanted through every crevice as a sudden fire closed in.
"I'm fine. Are you?"
"I'm fine under the current circumstances."
A hand found her shoulder, holding firm as he leaned to glance along her face, her arms, anywhere that might call to his notice. Behind them, another resounding footstep. Finn drew his blaster and whirled to fire two shots into the face of a shadowy intruder; loud, piercing sounds. The trooper crumpled.
A bright flash briefly blinded her, a loud boom resounded as a structure exploded off to their left. She held up a hand to shield against it. More were coming. "Poe gave us orders to evacuate." She went on, not batting an eye. "He said that we would regroup later." And she would gladly die here if it meant protecting her friends. "We've managed to hold them off so far, but the New Order isn't showing any signs of slowing down."
"I'm at your disposal." A half-hearted grin. "Just tell me what you need me to do."
At the sign of more troops, filtering in from the fires, from beyond, Rey closed her eyes and stepped back. More would come barreling around the corner. No longer was this any kind of siege.
It was an extermination.
Rey lurched for cover beside one of their shoddy, dilapidating structures, checked her blaster, her saber and fired around the frame. There was a heavy thud ahead, followed by an agonized groan. "This place is a lost cause." She murmured.
More creaking, more popping gunfire, more screaming-several that she recognized. She stayed close to Finn, tentative fingers wove down the curve of his elbow, holding steadfast. "There's too many."
"It's too dangerous to stay here. The others can take care of themselves." Finn rose from where he'd crouched behind the structure.
At his statement, Rey blinked, and in a matter of seconds appeared hopelessly sad. Her current skills would only get her so far. As much as she hated to admit it, he made sense. If they died here, it would have been for nothing. The girl's eyes welled with tears as she refused to avert them from Finn's stare.
"I know," she croaked. "We have to go." Moving out from behind the structure, she motioned for him to follow before taking off across the clearing. A shot hissed just past her ear Finn Thankfully on her other side. The sound of an explosion sent her shuffling closer to Finn, running side by side through the brush. A large shudder shook the ground at their feet, rattling the sturdiness of their camp. There were no talks. There was only an exchange of shots to see who had the superior firepower.
They'd been running through the forest for a while now, firing shot after shot into the air with the hope of hitting something. Leaping over a cluttered mess of bodies from her comrades and members of the New Order alike, they split through the forest in the direction of their landing bay. Dozens of starships lifted off into the air, their engines booming in the chaos making her ears pop.
Shots fired into the air, the majority of which missing their target. The ships soared into the atmosphere, and only one didn't make it. It exploded into a shower of shards and plating, the debris soaring back into the atmosphere. More panicked yells resounded where it hit the ground. Its blast radius was enough to knock her back a few feet, grasping out a hand to steady Finn.
Rey looked around.
All of the ships were gone.
"Dammit." She hissed, threading her fingers through her disheveled hair, finally freeing the remainder from its tight confines. Brown hair fell just at her shoulders, slicked from the damp heat. "Let's keep going this way. If we can't get off the planet, then we can at least get away from the fight!"
"Then let's go!"
Reality hit her hard in the moments that Rey barreled through the forest with Finn. It should have been expected that when she thought that she could pursue something like this, chase it with both hands outstretched and willed fate to let her have it. Fate existed, and it was held in the hands of someone else who controlled her every movement like a dancing marionette. She would have only what it wanted her to have, and if she was told to go back to Tattooine and live her miserable life there in isolation, she would have no choice but to do it.
Ben wasn't a part of that. Finn or Poe weren't a part of that, and while she was right about a lot of things, she was wrong in telling Ben that he had a choice. He hadn't. She'd squeezed into his life without meaning to, had given him more grief than she could ever hope to atone for at any given time, had made him feel something, a sort of string taught between them and begging to close the distance. He'd wanted it, had held it in his hands and just like the parts to a play, they were on to the next act and someone else was setting the stage.
They neared a cliff edge. No other choice than to climb down from here.
"Rey!" Finn broke her from her thoughts when he barreled into her side and sent them in a flurry of tangled limbs through the grassy clearing. She almost yelled out in protest, up until she heard the sound of a blaster, saw the flurry of light in a passing second over their heads.
Oh, no.
Her lips parted, untangling herself from Finn to grab blindly for her lightsaber. A stormtrooper towered above her, a harsh kick sending her weapon skittering over the edge. She gasped, the words: run, you need to run now, tipping against the edge of her mind and attempting to spill from her lips in a desperate warning.
There were at least a dozen of them, advancing on the pair with their weapons primed at the ready. She stood in front of Finn. One of them fired. A shot ripped through Rey's knee and sent her buckling with a loud cry that echoed over the cliff. A few pained gasps escaped her, her breathing suddenly ragged as she struggled to maintain her composure.
Troops advanced past her on Finn, shuffling him back toward the edge of the cliff-
"Stop!" She pleaded.
He was knocked over, his hand grabbing for the edge, managing a tight but precarious hold.
In the next few passing seconds-much faster than what she could keep up with-they grabbed ahold of Rey and held her down, pinning her arms to her back and snapping her head with a tight grip on her hair.
"Let go!" Rey snapped back, writhing underneath them, her jerking doing very little to promise any sort of freedom. Her chest heaved, baring her teeth into a snarl. "Let go of me!"
"You knew this was coming. It was only a matter of time." Troopers parted to let Hux pass, overly dressed as always with that coy and cruel flat line that served as a smile. It made her skin crawl. "You all did this when you refused to give up the location of Kylo Ren. I was suggesting a partnership, and yet you still protect him."
At his order, they maneuvered toward Finn. She saw a blaster flash outside of her peripherals. Another shot split through the air just above his head. He flinched, his hold wavering for the barest second. They weren't easy. Only efficient.
Rey's heart stopped, her already pale face being forcibly shoved down into the grass when she fought them harder. "You're going to die!" She threatened with a snapping of teeth, spitting dirt from her mouth.
A few kicks were delivered to her stomach, Rey's chest heaving with the assault, the air leaving her lungs and being thrown to the wind that scarcely touched her now. She was overheating, snapping and snarling at her captors. There were too many, and she had nothing.
Her adrenaline dulled the pain to a degree, but the sight of Finn dangling over the edge was enough to send it careening back. "Let him go!" She growled through bated breaths, her lungs screaming, bile rising up in her throat with a pounding ache in her ribs that promised a few fractures. Blood poured from her nose with an extra kick that had been delivered to her face-that one more of a personal grudge than an attempt to keep her sedated.
"This can all be avoided if you give up the location of Kylo Ren." Hux sighed.
"Let him go." She spat with the same amount of malice as before.
"Where is Kylo Ren?!" Hux yelled.
As if merely teasing her, watching her form heaving with panicked gasps on the ground, her struggling became less strenuous, a sudden jerk here and there from a tired girl that hadn't quite lost her spirit just yet, the gun was held at Finn's head.
"Please stop." Rey's brows were drawn into raw, bleeding panic, blood spilling down her lips and into her mouth. "Please don't do this." She pleaded into a shuddering cry, and she begged and every ounce pushed from her chest was genuine. Above her head, ships were shot down one by one. Flames painted the sky red.
"Just take her." Hux barked. "We don't need him."
Rey snapped, willing and begging the Force to her aid.
It came.
She threw the one holding her, scrambling to her feet with a noticeable limp. Throwing an outstretched hand, the others were pushed back with a harsh shove that bent the tree's branches above their heads. One armed against Finn was sent careening over the edge with a flick of her wrist. She ran to him, grabbing at his hands as the other troopers advanced behind her.
"Rey, just go!" Finn pleaded. "Go find Poe. Get out of here!"
"I don't have time for your self-sacrificing bantha-shit right now." Rey ignored him, her hands grabbing his wrists in a white knuckled grip. She wavered the tiniest amount, pulling with as much might as she could muster. Finn attempted to help, heaving upward with his weight, but he wavered, the two nearly teetering over the edge when he fell back down.
"Rey!"
"Shut up!" She heard them behind her, advancing. Every weapon was primed at the ready.
She had to think, had to think. There was only one option. "I'm really sorry about this."
His lips parted to ask, and she didn't give him any time. She wrenched his hands free from the cliff's edge, holding a tight grip to his wrists-
"What are you doing?" Finn gasped. He looked up at her, eyes widening in terror. It pained her to see the look on his face, so devoid of hope and wavering trust.
"I need you to trust me!" Without thinking on this part, she allowed her body to fall forward. The two of them tumbled over the cliff, and together, they plummeted.
