When Rey awakens, Kylo is on his side next to her, his eyes preoccupied by his own fingers playing in her hair.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," his eyes waver between hers and her hair.
Still under the influence of sleep, she looks at him, her eyes darting between his lips and his eyes, before the events of the day replay in her brain, a deluge come back to her.
A smile overtakes her as she turns a deep shade of pink. She brings her arms up and presses her lower palms into her eyes, trying to hide her embarrassment.
"How long was I asleep for?"
"Not long."
She feels his hand on her bare belly and realizes she is still completely naked. The feeling in the rest of her body slowly starts to turn back on, and there is something else: his dick hard against her thigh, pressing into her.
It surprises her, to have him so close, so ready. Her body moves to flee, but a tightening in her chest pulls her back. Instead of running, her body turns away sharply, exposing her back to him. She realizes too late it was either a very bad move or an incredibly good one, as his cock now nestled between her uppermost thighs. He takes it for a good one and wraps his arm around her side, bringing it up to her breasts.
Before she has a chance to react, to think twice, she feels his lips press against her back. So few things had ever touched her skin there so softly. Her body tenses and she lets out a slight whimper. Embarrassed that she sounds like that, she digs her head into the floor in front of her. Kylo, however, wants to hear that sound again, and kisses her back again, lightly. Her body reacts again, and he keeps kissing until every inch of her back is covered in them, holding her writhing body with his hand and rolling her nipples gently between his forefinger and thumb until she is moaning out loud, not afraid of her own sounds anymore.
His dick throbs, blood pulsing through it almost uncomfortably, he is so hard now.
When he stops his barrage of kisses, she turns her torso against him, until their faces line up, but their lower bodies are still pressed firmly against one another. Their eyes meet and she kisses him, deeply, her grogginess worn off by his touch.
As they continue to kiss, he takes his hand from her breasts and runs it down her body to her ass, to where his dick and her thighs meet. He parts her legs, running her leg up and over his own before bringing his hand back down her thigh and finding her clit. She moans into his mouth and he smiles. She is sopping wet already and his fingers are soon covered in her. He thinks about teasing her here, about running his fingers down her folds and deep inside her. About making her scream out his name before he gives her anything, but he is too eager, hearing her sigh out her pleasure. He wants to be in her now, wants to be in her forever. He thanks everything in her for allowing him to do this again, a second time. He wishes it would be the second time of many, and tries to stave off the reality that any of this could be the last.
He rushes those thoughts out of his head and brings the hand beneath her up to her chin, holding her mouth against his. His other hand finds his dick and brings it to her entrance, her small, round ass pressed up against his pubic hair.
He stops kissing her and looks at her.
"Is this okay?"
"Yes, Kylo, please," she says as she swallows and catches her breath.
He pushes into her when he hears her say his name. Fuck, he wants to hear her say that all the time.
"Say it again," he growls into her ear before nibbling it, his hand running from her chin to her neck.
"Please," she means it.
"Again," his grip tightens around her neck and he can feel the blood rushing beneath the surface. Her pussy twitches at the sensation of his fingers digging into her neck.
"Please Kylo," her voice struggles to come out.
"Say my name," his lips brush against her ear as he whispers it into her.
"Kylo," it comes out as a growl, her voice box impeded by his grip.
He releases his hand from her neck and lets her gasp in air. His hand tightens on her ass, burrowing his fingers into her flesh, watching it dimple under his pressure.
"Fuck, Rey, what do you do to me?" he can no longer contain his deep moans.
She brings her hand up until it is behind him, in his hair, and kisses him deeply as he thrusts into her. When they pull apart, a smile graces her lips, luxuriating in seeing him like this, sweaty and needy inside of her. She bites her lip as he grazes something deep inside her and he notices, repeating the same exact movement. Her breath rises and her moans intensify until she finally breaks.
"I'm close, Kylo." She holds her breath and waits. When it comes, lights play behind her eyes as her whole body rocks back and forth on his cock.
When he hears her say those words, he shatters. He holds his breath, waiting for her, wanting her to feel good before he does. When he feels her pussy wrap even more tightly against his dick, he can't stop it anymore, and he pours into her, his cock twitching with each spurt.
They both tremble, her in his arms, rocked shortly by the aftershocks of their union. He stays in her until he goes soft, and spills out with his semen. She feels the warmth between her legs and rubs them together, never realizing how messy this act truly was, but also not wanting to clean him off her, ever.
He releases her and rolls over. She mirrors him, both panting and looking at the obsidian ceiling above. They both smile and let out tiny laughs at the same time, letting the expanse of emotions get to them simultaneously. Was this happiness?
Something occurs to her right then. It snatches her from the moment and she sits straight up, covering her breasts with her arms.
"Rey?" his post-coital exhaustion doesn't quite pick up on her rapid change in emotion.
Her hair is half matted, half messy, a result of Kylo playing with it, no doubt. She surveys the room as he props himself up on one elbow, running his fingers lightly against her arm. Tracing her had quickly become his favorite hobby.
She sees the glint of the droid in the corner and quickly pops up, leaving Kylo almost cold in her wake.
"Fuck, R2!" she breathes and quickly lunges for her clothes, stepping into her pants before Kylo has a chance to process.
He looks to the droid silent in the corner.
"He's in sleep mode. He has been since…" his expression quickly changes to a frown as he notices she's already in her pants, breasts rewrapped, and is pulling her shirt over her head.
The moment escapes him, this moment he had wanted to last forever is over. The swift change in emotion becomes a pit in his stomach, a black plague nestles in him. What if that was the last time he would ever feel her?
He sits up fully and she is already in her pack, digging for something.
"Don't worry, even if he was looking, I don't think he would ever play that memory of us for our grandchi-" he catches himself before he can finish. Fuck.
She looks up from her bag and meets his eyes. Her lips form into a soft smile, sweetly forgiving him for that mistake, letting him know in one movement that it was okay, before returning to rifling through the knapsack.
But his guilt floods back to him again and he rises to find his pants. He pulls them on, knowing that he would never have grandchildren with her, that he had eviscerated his own lineage when his saber ran through her. There was no other route to continue the Skywalker legacy. It would only ever be Rey now. He would never share himself with another.
"I don't deserve this. I don't deserve you." He stands looking at the opposite wall when he says it.
"Are we back to this?" he can tell by her voice that she wears an exhausted smile.
"Rey…" his voice is deep and earnest as he turns to face her.
"Kylo…" she mimics his voice, mocking his breathy melodrama as she walks towards him, holding the canteen and two ration packets, a huge grin plastered on her face.
He is enamoured in her beauty, never having seen her so unencumbered by worry or panic before. He takes her in, and can't contain his smile back at her.
She gets to him and kisses him as if it were easy, as if it were the most natural, easiest thing she has ever done. Her hand are full with the supplies, so he takes the opportunity to rest his hands against her sides.
She brings her arms up to rest on his shoulders, her full hands up behind his head and they stand there, almost swaying, her umber eyes sparkling under his.
Fuck, I love her.
The thought enters his head immediately, and hits him fully.
She lets go of the supplies and they drop behind him, her arms falling from his shoulders. He turns slightly, about to comment on her clumsiness, but when he turns back to her, her face is in full shock.
What?
She doesn't say it, but he can hear it. A crescendo of energy picks up around them, the thick force thawing all at once and flowing like a coursing river through them. Both of them gasp at the sudden change. The force, its task now complete, returns deep into the mountain. Their bond reopens and everything rushes back. He realizes she had heard him, heard his thoughts, heard his declaration, and takes a step back.
"What?" she says it outloud this time, everything in her pushing and pulling in confusion, her eyes searching his for the truth.
Before he can process, the familiar dimness of their surroundings pulses in blue, lighting up both their bodies in its glow. Her face scrunches up and breaks eye contact, trying to make sense out of the rapid fire events.
They both look down to her wrist. Her beacon was pulsing. She puts her hand over it, trying to make it not real, trying to make none of this real.
"They're here…" his voice is small and detached. His mind jumps back to the way he felt when she had left his arms. He was never going to feel her again.
He wants to grab her, to kneel at her altar once more, to have her, but as he thinks it, the mountain rumbles.
"No," escapes both of them simultaneously, more out of disbelief than fear.
The ground around them splits deep between them. The fissure runs all the way up and around, cracking the whole room open like an egg. Red light floods everything as the outside surface of Mustafar is exposed through the ever growing crevice. Both their eyes struggle with the sudden influx of light, even the dim glow being more than they had experienced in the last few days.
Above them flies a U-Wing, an older model. Kylo notices it a second before Rey, and glances at her as she finds it.
The light on her beacon beeps more urgently, flashing red and purple and blue through their time together.
Her eyes come back down from the ship to him. As they do, the ground beneath her gives way, and her body disappears suddenly from his line of sight.
"REY!" he lunges for her, but it is too late. The side of the room that she stood on slopes down, and her body lays on the ground, a slight trace of blood gathering under her head.
Kylo immediately jumps down to her, before his side of the floor collapses too. R2, awoken by the quake, is ready, and his thrusters keep him airborne, landing gently on the ground beneath them. The walkway slopes up on either side of them now, and the heat from the lava lake below rises. The earth still holds its dangerous rumble, but it is lessened as Kylo tries to figure out what to do. He can no longer see the U-Wing and knows by now it must have landed. He more than knows, he can feel it, the force come back to join him. He kneels down and places his hands under her, lifting her to his body. She is limp in his arms, but he can still feel her strong will in the force. Her injuries had been enough to knock her out, but they weren't serious.
He looked at her unconscious body in his arms, and knew that the force was giving him a choice. This was all done purposefully. From the second they stepped into these caves - no, from the second they met, it had been playing around them, orchestrating. It wasn't Snoke anymore, it was the very fabric of existence that brought them together. It had planted those coordinates, it had restructured this place, it had known when to separate them and what to show them in the memories. And now, he knew, it had thrown Rey down, incapacitated her, to see what he would do, what choice he would make, with her in his arms and the Resistance closing in.
He would take her. He would take her and run. They were far enough away that they might not catch him. With the force back he would use it against them, to get away from them, to keep her. He would keep her.
He looked down at her face, blood starting to trickle from her head wound.
Keep her. What did that mean?
He knew what it meant for him. It meant he would take her to his ship. He would lay her in his bed. He would know her better than anyone else ever had. He would fall asleep talking with her in his arms every night, and wake up to her every morning. He would marry her in front of everyone, in front of the Galaxy, and take her to bed that night, knowing that it would only be him and her forever. He couldn't give her a family, a traditional one, but nothing was ever traditional in his family. He would be her family.
And Rey? Rey would hate him for it. She would thrash and scream and tear her heart out, trying to get back to those people, those people she knitted together into her own makeshift family, who approached him as he thought. She would claw at him, and spit on him, and do everything she could to escape him. She would tear through him, but more than that, she would tear through herself, and like a caged animal she would change into something else. Something that wasn't Rey. He could never keep a person like Rey. She was her own being, her own free and independent spirit, and he could never trap her.
He could take her body, he could so easily bend it to his will, but he wanted her, her soul, and he would ever have that, ever, if he took her now.
He turns, and starts to hike up the slope to her people, towards the Pilot and the Traitor. R2, who stood behind Kylo, watching him deliberate, lets out a relieved sigh, and follows him.
Before he can get far, over the roar of the lava, he hears shouting. He stops and looks up. On the opposite side of the room, across ever expanding lava flow and now hanging walkways, he sees them, their weapons drawn. He recognizes the Pilot and the Traitor, but there is one more, one he has never seen. They're screaming something at him but he can't hear them. He focuses.
"Put her down Ren," the Pilot's voice rises amongst the rest, dangerous and lacking the usual frivolity which the Pilot usually had in these situations.
Or perhaps he should say the General. He wasn't surprised that the highest ranking member of the Resistance was there for Rey, risking himself. She was their Last Jedi. She was their hope. But more than that, she was their family, and they weren't leaving her behind.
The part of his heart that he had been trying to kill for the last decade swells. He looks down at her and knows she deserves this. She deserves to have a family that actually comes back for her. A small part of him wishes she were awake to see them fighting for her. He begins to understand, now, her decision in the Throne Room when she chose them.
As the thoughts enter his head, so does a growing darkness. As he sets her down and backs away, a searing jealousy rips through him. He closes his eyes to try to tamp down on it, but it resonates through him, making him nauseous. She would always choose them over him, like she had done so many years before. She would always run to them, and not to him, in battle. He had done too much bad, there was too much darkness in him, she would never be his, not fully, not as long as they still existed. His eyes shoot back up to them in fury. R2 wavers behind him, not sure what to do with all the emotion in the widening room.
The walkways between them groan, now only affixed by a few points above Kylo. They stare each other down and he is sure he will have to dodge blaster fire soon. He backs up, shielding R2 just in case. The new one's head cocks a bit, but the Traitor and the Pilot's faces are stone. The tension between them rises, and he sees the Traitor whispering to the other two, no doubt elucidating on the best way to strike. No one wants to be the first to move.
The lair makes the decision for them, as one of the walkways swings lose, creating a domino effect between them. All of the pathways start to buckle under their own weight, after losing half of their supports in the collapse. Kylo looks to the Resistance fighters, still on the solid ground on the opposite side of the room, distracted by the imminent disintegration of this place. He begins to inch farther backwards, making his way towards the surface of Mustafar above them.
The rebels notice his retreat and start to run down the opposite slope, towards Rey's prone body on the ground.
Kylo is almost gone when he hears a snap. The force is interfering again. He flashes around to see a walkway careening down at an angle. He instantly slows everything around him to a glacial roll. It was his first time reaching out to the force in several days and it felt right to be able to manipulate it again. His minor control over time gives him a moment to take in the scene. The Resistance are opposite him and nearing Rey, but still farther away from her than he is. R2 stands over Rey, not abandoning her like he had just done. He looks to the walkway and his mind conducts dozens of small equations in the force, calculating its trajectory. His heart seizes when he realizes it will crush her. In an instant, he is running at full speed back to her. He had never staved off something that large with the force, he didn't know if he could, but he might get to her in time. He had to get to her in time.
The roar of the walkway is thunderous as it approaches, but everything in his senses is her. Her face, her eyes, her smell, it was all her. He is on his knees sliding as the walkway makes contact with the hard ground beside her and instinctively, his hand comes out, and he channels everything around him into holding it off. He screams as his body slides against hers, but the walkway doesn't stop. It is so close to them now and he moves to cover her body with his own, as if that would help. As he does, the walkway stops, suspended harshly in the air above them, perpendicular to their bodies.
The rebels, who were running as fast as they could, instantly freeze. It was as if Kylo was sucking all of the energy out of the room and channeling it into saving Rey.
Kylo takes her into his free arm and bellows, feeling as if the whole weight of the walkway was crushing him slowly, even though it remained rigid above him. He gives one final push, and it is enough, sending the entirety of the walkway back against the cliff, down into the lava lake below.
He looks down at her, peaceful in his arms, his sharp breath strong enough to move her damp hair out of her face. He is so tired. He brings her closer to his chest and wants to keep her there while he sleeps, but he hears the footsteps of the rebels approaching. He closes his eyes and stands, Rey in his arms, R2 behind him.
Their blaster pistols are all raised to his head as they approach slowly. He doesn't move. He doesn't know if he can move. He sways slightly and thinks he sees something like compassion from the one he doesn't recognize. He focuses his stare on her, but as he does, her face drains of anything it might have held except for hatred and contempt.
The rebels falter and hesitate in front of him, this most hated man in the Galaxy, this evil they had seen destroy so many of their friends, this monster who had just saved Rey from certain death.
Kylo takes a step towards them and they all tighten their grip on their weapons.
Kylo feels a brush against his leg, but doesn't see R2 rush in front of him, stepping between the Resistance and himself.
"R2, buddy, get out of the way," the Pilot's laser focus does not leave Kylo's face.
Overlapping beeps ring out, and the Pilot's shoulders drop, slightly, though his weapon does not. The Traitor and the Other One don't let up, clearly not understanding the droid.
"What do you mean, R2? Of course he is," the Pilot's face drops into a frown.
R2's beeps get louder and closer together.
The Pilot's weapon drops, and the Traitor and the Other One lapse into confusion.
"Poe! What are you doing?"
The Pilot stays silent and Kylo takes a step forward.
"Poe," the Traitor's grip tightens on his weapon, saying the Pilot's name slowly, as a warning.
Kylo closes the distance between himself and the Pilot and stretches Rey out to him. The Pilot holsters his weapon and takes her still body into his arms.
"I got you Rey, you're safe now," escapes from the Pilot as a whisper, meant only for Rey, but Kylo hears it and everything in him lurches.
He slowly backs up and watches the Pilot's hands cradle her, bile rising in his stomach. The dirty scum's fingers delve too deeply into her flesh and Kylo bites down on his tongue to avoid lashing out. The Pilot's grip readjusts around Rey as he pulls her closer to his body and Kylo can taste the copper of his own blood in his mouth.
He doesn't notice when the Pilot's gaze moves off Rey and looks at him directly. He raises his eyes from where Rey was being held and meets his gaze.
"A life for a life," the Pilot looks at Kylo sternly as he says it.
Kylo stares, not giving anything back. Poe turns and starts away, but the Traitor and the Other One remain, their guns pointed directly at him still.
Slowly, the Traitor starts to back away, but his gaze and blaster never leave Kylo. The Traitor reaches out for the Other One, but she pulls away, and in an instant, her blaster is flush with Kylo's forehead, her arms stretching unnaturally to meet his height.
"ROSE!" the Traitor screams and the Pilot whips around with Rey, now further down the walkway.
"He took Paige from me. He almost took Rey from me. We can't just let him live, not after everything he's done," full hatred warbles in her throat as she stares pure disgust into Kylo's unmoving face.
"Not like this Rose, you're better than this, we're better than this."
She turns her head to the Traitor as he talks, a tear running down her face.
"I promise you, we will kill him, but it can't be today," the Traitor continues, obviously having some pull over the Other One.
Her face contorts, her small features turning back to Kylo. She lowers her gun from his head.
"A life for a life," her voice is strong. She turns away from him to follow the Pilot, unafraid.
As they near the U-Wing, the hair on Poe's neck stands up. He looks to where they came from to see Kylo Ren staring back, having walked out of the crevasse to watch their retreat. He is far away, still, and Poe knows he is not an immediate threat, but his presence seems to loom over them. It is as if Poe can see his haunted eyes clearly, though he is only a dark mark on the already dark horizon.
Poe pauses, and as he does, he feels Rey flutter in his arms. He looks down to her. Her eyes are barely open, but they're not on him. He feels her body reach out, slightly, almost imperceptibly, towards Ren. Before he can process it, she is limp again and the ground beneath them starts to rumble.
They run to the U-Wing and start take-off procedures, Rey tucked securely into a bed.
When Poe reaches the cockpit, the Supreme Leader is still frozen in the same spot, in the distance. He stands unwavering as the world crumbles around him. Poe watches him for as long as he can, and thinks he sees Ren fall to his knees as the planet becomes a blur of landmarks beneath them.