TW: Things get VERY violent. If that concerns you, skip to the chapter notes at the end and I'll give a synopsis.
All her senses overload.
The sound comes first. Its waves are crushing, violently filling the empty space around her. The noise is so cacophonous it sounds like no noise at all, a static thunder cancelling itself out.
The lights are next, blowing out her vision, constricting her pupils painfully. Everything is overexposed, bathed in a blinding white. She takes a sharp breath and squeezes her eyes shut, straining the muscles there to block out any trace of light.
She feels the droplets from the force plane bundle on her skin as the hair on her arms stands up. The thrashing wind is gone, and all that remains is cool, dead air, stagnating against her wet skin. She might shiver if she knew what was happening, but she doesn't, so instead she stands festering in place.
All she is sure about is the feeling of his skin under her palm, her only beacon in this chaos. Her hand starts to slip from his face, her mind screaming for it back, to protect her from the new elements. Her body, though, her body wants to keep it on him, wants her touch to never leave him.
She feels light stubble scrape against her as it skitters down, threatening to fall. He catches her hand in his own before her touch can slip, and keeps her there, keeping her linked to her anchor though this turmoil.
Everything else is too much. The light is too much, the sound is too much, the air is too heavy, and then she hears him, feels his jaw move under her touch.
"Rey."
Everything disentangles at his voice, and she can hear it then: the unmistakable sharp reverb of blaster fire. The swell of light evens itself and she opens her eyes to make out his face. It's sheer terror.
This was a mistake. She's nothing but a distraction.
She tears from his gaze and looks to her left, towards the pings of munitions. The ground is blanketed in white, and she thinks for a moment in her haze that they're in the snow again. Somehow, they're always in snow, in light. That or dark, dark caves. Black and white. It must be a cosmic joke, like so much of what concerns the two of them.
She blinks to clear the blur from her eyes.
The familiar sheen of white armor gleams beneath her.
It's not snow.
The bodies are everywhere, everywhere, and she can't see the ground. She steps closer to Kylo instinctively, her mouth open.
Dozens of lives. Dozens of lives like Finn, all nothing but ground cover now. Spots of black and red dot their armor.
She follows the nebula of the dead up the hallway before she sees where the blaster fire originates from.
A only a few Stormtroopers are left, shaking as they fire wildly down the now empty hallway.
Rey stands shocked in place, her hand still on Kylo's cheek, staring at the soldiers. Ren's remaining Knights move effortlessly through the bodies to serve as a shield between the reunited and the shooters.
Kylo's eyes are the only one not focused on the enemy. He hasn't stopped looking at Rey since she materialized out of the ether. His body is rigid under her touch, his saber is still lit, but it stands paralyzed in his grip like the rest of him. In this, his most desperate hour, she is there.
He takes this time, in the eye of the storm, to take her in, her freckles, her skin clutching impossibly onto the brushes sun still swept across it, her lips. He stops. Her lips. He couldn't think out them now.
But she's here. All of her. For him. Not out of fear, not out of displaced loyalty, not to see him fall. But for him, all of him.
He's not alone.
Rey watches as the Knights close in on the Troopers, their melee weapons menacing. The blaster fire seems to be purposefully missing, and she imagines the people inside the white armor. They'd be younger than her, as young as Finn was when she met him, newly defected, probably. She thinks to him now. How desperate he had been for touch, for connection, after a lifetime of harshness.
At her last thought, the final Stormtrooper falls. Rey watches as the Knight who dealt the blow struggles slightly to dislodge his weapon from deep inside the trooper's skull.
Rey has been a soldier for three years. She has seen death, and destruction, and mayhem. But she has never seen so many dead in one place. The reality of war could go unseen, often, on the scale they played on. She had seen Star Destroyers implode, had cheered on when squadrons were wiped out by Poe and his pilots' steady hands, and through that all, she could always say it was just a ship, it was just a simulation. When she struggled to sleep at night, she could forget the lives she knew were ended, instead making them into something faceless and calling them enemies. A single story of thousands of lives. The enemy.
But here, it is visceral. The bodies beneath her twitch their last electrical pulses, and she thinks of Finn.
What was this then? What had she stumbled upon? Kylo and his Knights aren't killing the enemy here. They are killing their own. Why?
Before she can turn to open her mouth, to look at him for the first time, she hears it.
The steady tempo seems to mock the beat of her heart. It clashes against the sound of her blood in her ears. It is unmistakable. Hundreds of steps landing at the same time. The precision of cruel indoctrination echoes through the hallway. The next horde is making their way down the adjacent hallway, an expandable vanguard meant only to face their death at the hands of Ren and his Knights, in an attempt to exhaust them even a little.
To someone, this was a fair trade.
Rey stands, her gaze never wandering from the direction of the sound. She wants to see. She anticipates the white armor, the sheen of it blinding. She anticipates the burn of her stomach lining at the sight of them, knowing, knowing anyone of them could be just like her best friend if given the chance.
But the shock of white never comes. Instead, when the sound materializes at the end of the opposite hallway into figures, she is met with a wall of black. Black armor mirroring black robes, in a sea of white. And then there is her, a tan dot on a monochrome background.
No, these weren't Stormtroopers. These were something else.
Before she can think, the matte black of the Knights blurs with the glossy black of the new soldiers. Her feet are off the ground and something is pulling her away.
His arms are around her waist, gliding her into an entryway alcove shielded from the eruption of new violence in the hallway. Sharp pings ring out and the air next to them alights in streaks of neon red. Rey's eyes go wide, thinking of the four against dozens, but Kylo seems calm, knowing the strengths of his Knights better than she does.
He is standing over her, pinning her almost uncomfortably to the wall. She feels his body press against hers, the rush of both their blood beating out to each other in the places where their bodies meet, trying to find each other once again.
Everything in her stills. They hadn't touched through the bond in so long, and it is as real as ever. How is it possible that she can feel him like this? She is a ghost. A phantom come to haunt him in this chaos.
Her face is staring straight into his chest, covered in his Supreme Leader costume once again. A man playing dress up.
She can feel his heavy breath on her face, the strands of hair which frame her head moving slightly against her skin with every inhale and exhale. They stand frozen for longer than they should, considering. It is as if her gaze is fixed in front of her, too afraid to meet his eyes as everything else comes back to her.
Not one to back down, she finally looks up at him, his eyes are almost black staring straight down at her. There is so much behind them. Fear, admiration, anger, adoration, disbelief.
And something else that she doesn't want to face yet, can't face yet.
"Why are you here?" he asks, and he just wants her to say it. Say it. He wants to hear it fall from her lips, so much that everything else around them evaporates until it's just his soul addressing hers.
She hears him, but the question doesn't register as she feels the pull of him, feels both his want and hers at the same time. His lips part slightly and her chest swells. They can't do this, not now, not with literal rivers of blood running inches from them. She tenses as his face moves closer to hers, her body going rigid against his and he stops inches from her.
His eyes dart back and forth between hers, as if searching her for the source of her apprehension. His heart drops and the ache in his heart immediately and instinctually shields itself from her once again.
He was wrong. He had misread. Maybe she didn't even mean to be here. Maybe the force brought her here unwilling, like it used to.
She had been giving him only the most miniscule of contact of the past week, since Mustafar, since he had thought the truth and she had heard it.
And it had been too much for her. He had scared her. Of course she wouldn't want him, not like that, not with everything she had. Not the way he wanted her.
He moves to rest his head on her shoulder, but her upper body twists away from him and closer to the edge of the alcove. He can't redirect his movement fast enough and his head settles against the durasteel warmed by where her body was a millisecond ago.
He still pins her to the wall with his lower body, unable to give up the contact there, but their upper bodies don't line up anymore. It was almost always like this between them, the connection always there, but one of them was always twisting away from it. He thought it would be different after they had given themselves so completely to one another. He thought wrong.
His sad internal monologue is broken by her cool voice, "What are they?" she jerks her head towards the soldiers. She says it casually, as if there wasn't an intense battle happening yards away. As if this wasn't happening between them, as if she hadn't just silently rejected him.
"Death troopers," the answer is muffled into the wall. He tries to gather himself. The acid of adrenaline which had been coursing through his veins in the fight is painful now, and he can almost feel his every muscle fiber as they crush into hers.
Rey cocks her head to the side, and her curiosity wins out over her fear. She turns her head slightly, to gaze out past the corner of the alcove, her body slipping against Kylo's as she does, distracting him with the slight friction. The Knights are impressive, their fighting styles are advanced and varied. Each carries a different weapon, all melee variations on sabers. The weapons are admirable, and she notices they do their jobs well, as droves of the enemy die quickly under their operation, but none are quite as clean or efficient as the classic design of a lightsaber.
She watches as the black cloaks float over the Death troopers, aerial assaults timed in precision. It is beautiful, artful, the way they spin above the crowd. Not like her fighting, which is lumbering and all about brute power. She realizes Kylo and her are the same in that.
She is so entranced by their movements, by how quickly they are tearing through the seemingly elite squadron, that she almost fails to see a black mask turn slightly to look straight at her. Their gaze runs like an arrow through the force though, and she is able to tuck her head back right before a blast pierces the corner where her head was, taking out a chunk with it.
Kylo grabs her and shoves her deeper into the niche.
"What the fuck Rey?" the deep tremor of his voice echoes through her, before something occurs to him and his face twists in confusion, "Could they see you?"
"Those are your soldiers," she breathes out, ignoring his question for the second time that day.
"They were. Now they're Hux's soldiers."
It takes Rey only a moment.
"That fucking weasel."
Kylo huffs out a single, amused grunt, "He's been planning this since Snoke's death. When I was with you, he took it as his chance."
"How many did he turn?"
Kylo turns his face away from hers, not able to look at her growing worry.
"How many, Kylo?"
"Thousands."
Rey's face drops, sending shocks down Kylo's spine.
"That looks an awful lot like concern on your face."
It's Rey's turn to search his eyes, a crease forming as her eyes narrow, "Don't play this game, not now."
"You're the one…"
"Kylo," she sets her hands on either side of his face, feeling his scar ribbon beneath her touch, "Tell me you know what you're doing." He can feel her biceps tense through her touch, underscoring her fervency.
He almost melts into her as his heart seizes at her touch. She was concerned for him. She was touching him. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he had been the one to misread. He feels drunk in her hands, his entire body running in waves of warmth, "I've been planning too."
She knows what he is not saying. Don't worry, I won't leave you. I could never leave you.
But she also knows that there is no way he and his Knights can survive in direct combat like this forever. He has already lost two, and while the remaining were formidable, it was five against an army. She needs to get to him, to get him out of this place. She needs to know where he is.
"Where are we? What ship?"
"The Discord," the information is offered so freely she has to stop her body from reeling away.
Rey's eyebrows knit as she stares into his eyes. He was so close to her she could feel the humidity from his sweat, the radiating heat of his body.
"It's my flagship," he continues, noticing her confusion.
Rey had studied the First Order Fleet with the Resistance, had lobbied back and forth with ideas about strategic attacks in long, not so sober nights spent in the War Room. Never, was a ship called the Discord mentioned.
"What kind of ship is it?" she asks in pure curiosity.
"It's a dreadnought."
Rey's hands drop from his face, never having imagined that would be the true answer to her question. No. How? The Resistance had destroyed all the First Order's dreadnoughts. The Supremacy, the Fulminatrix, they were long gone. How had they rebuilt an entire dreadnought when the Resistance had only scraped together a patchwork of rusted ships from the Rebel Alliance era?
He looks at her, hearing her frenzied thoughts from across the Universe.
"Now you know."
Rey opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, she feels something warm against her leg where Kylo leans into her.
The echoes of the clash in the hallway beside them grow closer. Rey tries to steady herself from the myriad of opposing emotions assaulting her from every angle.
She breathes in, needing to know, feeling a growing warmth blossoming on her thigh. She places her hands on either side of his broad torso and pushes, slightly, to get a clearer look at her thigh.
A bright red wetness flourishes against the tan of her leggings, reaching out amongst the threads slowly, forming distributaries on her leg. She braces him with one hand, noticing he does not let up his weight to help her, and presses the pads of her fingers into it, sticky under her touch, looking for her wound.
But she has none.
Her eyes quickly dart to the part of him that pressed there, and she sees it, his shiny wet black pant leg, slick with his blood. And above that, the flap of skin, hanging loose away from him, sticking to his clothes. The blood that spilled immediately camouflaged by the facade of his ebony costume.
Something flashes through her that she hadn't felt since Ahch-To, since she learned of Luke's betrayal, of the hurt he had caused Ben. She had been willing to hurt Luke back, to crush him against the slippery rocks, to hear his skull crack against the thrashes of the Ahch-To rain. Because he had hurt him.
And now, he was hurt again. They had hurt him.
"Rey, it's okay, I'm okay..."
Before he can finish, before he can catch her, before he realizes she is gone, she is out in the hallway with his Knights, who were closer than Rey had anticipated, having been pushed back deeper into the hall by the troops.
On instinct she reaches for her saber and ignites it, running through the Knights to advance on the Death troopers directly.
The ground is uneven with bodies, but her steps are sure, and she is guiding herself through them without thought, always finding the best possible foothold.
Her body clashes with the Death troopers. She is quick, too quick to register as something new, as a new player entered the game.
In the seconds it takes them to recognize something different, to register their own surprise in the face of this new element, her saber is twisted through them, their military grade, advanced armor reduced to nothing in the face of her saberstaff.
She twirls her saber effortlessly, as if she were just training, as if it were just slicing through air, and not meat and flesh.
Before she knows what she is doing, before she can gasp at her reaction, before she can think how is this possible? A perfect crop of bodies armored in black rest on top of their Stormtrooper predecessors, a bruise on their surface.
Everyone stops moving. The Death troopers, the Knights, the Supreme Leader now standing in the middle of the hallway, they're all completely frozen, staring at The Last Jedi in her field of death.
The air rushes back in, and the Death troopers resume their advance. But almost as quickly as they do, the Knights of Ren surge forward into the expanse left empty by Rey's outburst, hacking through the guard. Rey backs up, now ensconced by the protective Knights, and looks down at herself in disbelief.
She turns to Kylo, who is looking at her with the same awe. The same thoughts rush through both their minds.
How? How could she do this? This wasn't force projection, there was no way.
Of course her powers had grew, but this? Being able to fight from across the galaxy? This was something else, some new stage in their bond. No, some new stage in the Force itself. The same thoughts rush through both their minds.
He walks towards her, his steps picking up pace until he is almost running towards her down the expanse of the hallway. His legs work, the wound he carries only a sting somewhere in the back of his mind.
She realizes it was a flesh wound as he bounds towards her. She had waylaid so many because of a flesh wound. And she doesn't even care, not now. Because no one would hurt him, ever, not while she breathed.
He hears her thoughts and his steps slow as he approaches her. They are chest to chest once again.
He was so wrong. She had come for him, for him, for all of him, to protect him, to fight for him. He wasn't alone.
Both their eyes are searching now, knowing what comes next.
"Ready?" she asks.
"Always."
And with that, they are back to back once again as the Knights are pushed back and the guard envelops their forms.
The planes of their backs glide against one another as they parry and lunge. They stay like this, using each other for leverage, until necessity dictates that they separate. There are so many, and they come at them in waves. They are less skilled than the Praetorian guard, but have more skills than Stormtroopers. Rey is barely able to keep up, and her arms burn with the tiny scratches of deflected blasts. She had trained for this surely, but most of her combat was one-on-one, preparing for the proverbial final showdown with Ren. Now, she fights by his side, and the numbers were much higher than one-to-one.
There are too many Rey, we need to fall back.
I have an idea. Trust me?
Their eyes meet from across the hall. His head dips in a slight nod, and with that, the red-blue glow of her saber is gone, and she disappears, digging deeper into the mass of death troopers.
Kylo's eyes grow huge. She had sheathed her weapon in the middle of the enemy. Before he can think though, before he can question it, he is deflecting a blast with the edge of his saber, reflecting it back and hitting the trooper who had shot it.
It seems like an eternity passes, but in reality, it is only minutes. He can feel her link through the force, feel her strong and pulsing and he knows she is okay, but a black pit grows in him the longer he doesn't have eyes on her.
He trusts her though. Trusts her skills, trusts her power, her tenacity, so he pushes the feeling down.
His saber hisses through the chest of a death trooper he had slipped behind when he hears her voice in his head.
Call my saber.
What?
Trust me.
He reaches out, his hand stretching out in front of the horde, and he wills it to him. His grandfather's crystals are almost gleeful, feeling them working together like this.
As he does, the sound of spurting of blood and splitting bone play in a round, rolling like a distant wave growing closer to the shore.
He sees it then. The death troopers start falling grotesquely, their bodies cut in half, tops sliding off bottoms.
The saber spans a great portion of the hallway when it lays horizontal. But the soldiers closest to the walls on the periphery are too far out of its reach. All they can do is watch in horror as their brethren are sliced apart right next to them. All fighting ceases over the sounds of agony.
When the saber meets his palm, he shudders at how both how right and how wrong it feels in his grasp.
The feeling is momentary, because he can see her again. As if a sea has been parted, she stands at the opposite end of the hallway, framed by the troopers shocked into submission.
Her tunic is covered in spurts of dribbled blood, but none of it is her own.
It's her. It's only ever been her.
He feels both his own saber and hers in his hands, feels their dual power undulating slightly in his soul. He realizes then she is unarmed.
So do they.
In an instant all their blasters are focused in on her distant figure.
His hand is out again, and a dozen neon red blasts suspend in the air as they leave their muzzles, far away from threatening Rey.
With a twist, they are launched back to their point of origin, and all the remaining Death troopers fall in unison.
Kylo breathes deeply at the effort, drained. He wants to fall to his knees, but as he considers it, he sees Rey growing closer to him. He can stay standing.
When she gets to him, her hand takes his, and everything is okay again.
They are only granted a moment of silence before the low grumble of marching picks up somewhere deep inside the dreadnought's belly.
"Kylo, we need to retreat. There's no way we can keep this up." Rey's looks towards the new voice. It's modulated, and for a moment, Rey thinks this Knight might be a droid, but soon her thoughts are flooded by the mask Kylo wore the first time they had ever met, and know that's not the case.
He tightens his grip on her hand and they're walking away, down the hallway. The marching seems to be coming from every direction now, almost impossibly lock step. It feels as if the whole ship, the whole dreadnought, which is large enough to be its own principality almost, is vibrating with the efficiency of it.
They head down a hallway only to be met with a wall of black armor.
They turn in an about face, and another wave, this time of white, stands in front of them.
Flanked on either side of the hallway, Kylo uses the knowledge of his flagship against them. He reaches out and closes the airtight locks on either side of them, locking the troops out, but locking them into an area no larger than the common room on the Falcon. The sounds of marching stop abruptly with the clanging of the airtight doors. An eerie silence descends, pulsing with the sounds of all of them breathing in and out almost in unison. It's Rey's only clue that his Knights are in fact living creatures and not programmed killing machines.
Rey's honed instincts take over and her whole body spins, looking for an escape. It doesn't take her long, the schematics of ships like this all burned into her head. She will always be a scavenger. Always.
She knocks on the durasteel floor, looking for the hollow. Dense deep knocks give way to sharp echoes. She looks up to the closest Knight, cloaked in gear that would have frightened her, once. Once, but not any longer.
"Help me?"
The Knight looks to Kylo, still reeling a bit from his immense manipulation of the force to save Rey. Kylo nods and the Knight immediately kneels down to Rey's level. They manage the get their fingers under the floor paneling and prop it up and over, revealing a duct system below.
Once she sees it, she knows exactly what must happen next. The only difficulty would be convincing Kylo.
She walks over to him, the room still quiet, the troops outside obviously waiting for direction.
As she does, she rips the bottom of her flowing tunic, slowly ratcheting it away from the rest. She kneels down in front of him and immediately his whole body tenses into a solid block, seeing her on her knees in front of him. She notices and rolls her eyes, grabbing his injured thigh and wrapping it, trying to control the bleed. He could be tracked by his blood, this she knew. She pulled tighter and knotted the makeshift bandage. He needed to become invisible in order for this to work.
She stands and looks at him, almost defiantly, before motioning to the hole in the floor.
"Go," it comes out of her softly, but commanding at the same time.
"Rey, no."
"You need to run. I can hold them off." Kylo shakes his head in terror and disbelief at her words. "I need you to go. I need you to stay safe."
Kylo shakes his head. Rey grabs his chin in her hand, "Please, please. Go."
"I'm not leaving you."
"I'm not really here, Kylo."
She knew she would meet this resolve, but knows this is the only way, knows she needs to find some way for him to understand, so she continues.
"Listen, there's too many of them. You've been fighting waves of them all day. You've lost two men and you're all exhausted." She looks around to his silent Knights as she says it, before meeting Kylo's eyes once again, "This is what Hux wants. He has an unlimited supply of what he sees as expendable parts. And there's five of you. There's no counterattack, not like this. Brute force will only get you this far." Rey senses the troops gathering from behind the jammed door, their vibrations raw in the force. "Is there anyone else, besides them," Rey's head jerks to the still Knights behind them, "that's loyal to you? That you can still trust?"
Kylo nods.
"Find them. We're on a Dreadnought. It could be days before they find you again if you're smart. Be smart, Kylo."
The door next to them ignites in sparks. They turn their head at the same time and his grasp on her tightens. They're burning their way through.
Rey turns back to him, "You need to run."
But he stays shock still in front of her. His Knights don't waver, waiting for a signal from their leader.
The steel grows more hot, the red lightening into orange and white, approaching its melting point.
"Please, go, please."
I can't...not without...
Rey breathes in sharply, her lips pursing in disbelief, "Oh for fuck's sake."
She grabs his collar and pulls him down to her. She wants the kiss to be crushing, to prove a point. But instead, when their lips meet, it's soft. He opens up to her, and their breath hitches through their noses in unison. His hands find her face and it feels like the only thing right in the entire Galaxy, this kiss.
When they break, she rests her forehead on his as he's bent down to her, "You will never get to kiss me like that, or any other way, ever again if you don't go. Now."
He moves from her and she thinks she sees the corners of his lips move ever so slightly up, but she can't be sure.
He leans into her once more and Rey almost wants to scream that now wasn't the time for a full romantic interlude, the heat from the melting door reaching its pitch, but instead of kissing her again, his lips brush against her ear.
The numbers he whispers to her don't make sense, but she knows they will, and as soon as they break, she is repeating them over and over again in an effort to memorize them.
Her concentration is so great that she doesn't notice when he is almost gone, his Knights already disappeared into the system below. His lower body is already in the duct before she breaks her rote reverie,
"Kylo, wait."
His body stops completely, reacting fully to her command. His eyes look up at her, and there is no fear, no war, nothing on the other side of the rapidly deteriorating wall. There is just the two of them.
"I love you," the words fall out of her slowly, in one full breath.
"I know."
She turns around to face the door as it drips away. Despite herself, she smiles, something huge and bordering on goofy. This is the face the troopers are met with when the door finally falls.
She staggers her stance, raising her blades up almost elegantly to meet the soldiers.
It's the last thing Kylo sees before he makes himself into a ghost.
Synopsis: Rey meets Kylo through the bond while he and his Knights fight off Stormtroopers (and Death troopers). Hux has launched a rebellion and it's not looking great. After Rey realizes Kylo had been hit (not seriously), she goes ape and kills A LOT of people (through the bond, SURPRISE! It has grown). Then, they fight side by side, kill A LOT more people and retreat because there are too many troops.
Eventually, Rey finds a way for Kylo and his Knights to escape while she holds back the troops. They part after a kiss (and Kylo whispers some numbers into Rey's ear), and then, Rey tells Kylo she loves him before he escapes.
His response: I know.
(I am overly sentimental and not very creative)
Also: Thank you guys for being so patient. I am a teacher and we started school early this year and it has all been death and four hours of sleep a night since then. I really apologize. I didn't edit this chapter as thoroughly as I usually do, so if there are typos galore or unfinished bits, I promise to edit ASAP, but right now, I have to get ready for work! I just wanted to get SOMETHING out because it has been forever.