Disclaimer: Star Wars is the property and creation of Lucas Film and Disney. I own none of the characters and places mentioned in this story.
Special thanks to my beta-reader Chridder (from AO3) for helping me out with this.
Hope you all brought your tissues because you might need those.
It was a bleak day on Coruscant. The rain poured heavily in the streets, forcing most citizens to hid into the comfort and warmth of their homes. But unbeknownst to them, there was someone whose mood was suited to the weather.
In a dark room, with all the windows blinds shut tight, a lone figure sat in a chair, staring aimlessly at nothing, his mask positioned on a nightstand nearby.
Kylo was restless and tense. His thoughts were plagued by one thing, or rather, one person.
Rey.
The moment when he engulfed her hand at the restaurant was playing in his mind over and over. He raised his left hand in front of his face, the same hand he used to show his weakness.
Almost immediately, he let his hand drop, hanging limply by his body.
He still didn't understand how or why Rey's simple touch could affect him so.
The truth was, and he was ashamed to admit it, that he wanted someone to let him be himself. To not feel censored.
And Rey did just that... she didn't even flinch or shout back when he had his outburst. She kept her cool, not aggravating the situation, and used the most unexpected method to calm him.
Also, she stood up to him. Again. As brave and beautiful as she was, she was equally stubborn, wild, and unpredictable.
Kylo froze, realizing the direction his thoughts took.
Did he just think Rey was beautiful? . Clearly, he was starting to lose his mind.
And now, Uthar's suggestion about the Jedi temple.
Was it even worth to try at all? Couldn't he just stay a few more days on Coruscant and then try to find an excuse for his master in the hopes that maybe, just maybe he will be allowed to look for clues about Kira's whereabouts?
Rey sat in the window sill, watching the raindrops. Ever since Ken found her, the rain became one of her favorite landscapes, one she couldn't get enough of. As for the thunderstorms... well, that was another story. She was afraid of them. Fortunately, this was only a rain that had started two days prior during her and Kylo's date, and it didn't stopped since.
Speaking of Kylo, she still had his cloak hanging on a chair in her room.
The sensible decision would have been to get rid of it after she got back home.
But for some odd reason, she couldn't let go of it. It was the only reminder that he was capable of kindness.
But she knew deep down that he only forgot to take his cloak in his haste to leave.
She wondered why he hid his face, though.
Were the knights of Ren under a vow to never show their faces? Or it only applied to the leader?
Even when she fought against him on Starkiller Base, she never saw his face. At least not entirely.
She saw little of his face, when her lightsaber tore through his mask, but she never saw his eyes or mouth.
Was he ugly? Was this the reason for which he never showed his face?
All of a sudden, the room got colder so Rey used the Force to levitate the cloak towards herself, covering with it.
The last thing Rey felt before she fell asleep on the window sill was the warmth the cloak provided.
The next day, the rain finally stopped, so Rey decided it would be a good day to explore Coruscant.
She really didn't have a chance to do so since she arrived because of...No, she won't think about him today.
Today she will go exploring and her first stop will be the Jedi Temple.
Her uncle, Tao, noticed her mood during breakfast.
"Why so happy today, Rey?" he asked curiously.
"Well, uncle, if you really want to know, today I plan to visit the old Jedi Temple. I want to see where grandfather spent most of his life. I really want to know him better. Do you want to come with me?" Rey smiled.
"No, thank you, Rey. I'm not ready yet... knowing that was the place where my parents grew up before the Jedi purge... but thank you for thinking about me," Tao replied, a little sadness in his eyes.
"Suit yourself. When Ken returns, let him know where I went, okay?" Rey added as she left the kitchen.
As Rey got closer to her destination, a sense of foreboding started to form in the pit of her stomach.
The living area that surrounded the temple was completely empty, void of life, like no one lived in the area for decades.
Another odd thing were the electrical fences or chargers that were put at the entrance in the living area surrounding the temple.
She needed to jump over some of them in order to advance, but right now she wondered if their purpose wasn't to keep away something from the populated areas.
She still kept going, no matter what she felt.
Soon she reached the inner yard of the temple and she realized why the area around the temple was vacated.
A few meters in front of her, five space wolves stood proud, ready to tear her apart.
Rey brought her hand to her hip, to grab her lightsaber only to realize she left it home. Her heart dropped to her stomach.
Just then, one of the wolves jumped, forcing Rey to slide left to the wall, hoping to find a crevice to hide in.
"Ken, please help me!" Rey beseech her cousin telepathically.
Kylo couldn't believe he was here. After spending time deliberating with himself, he decided to take Rey to the Jedi temple. Of course, he had no intention of stepping inside. He would rather wait in the yard and let Rey explore by wasn't like there was any danger for Rey to come by.
So here he was at the Kenobi residence willing to give it one last shot.
His knocking on the door were answered quickly enough by Tao.
"Lord Ren, what brings you here?!"
"Where is your niece?!"
The both men spoke at the same time. One in surprise, the other in demand.
Tao looked perplexed at Kylo, like trying to figure something out, while Tao's scrutiny didn't bode well with Kylo.
"Where is your niece?!" Kylo demanded once more.
Tao shook his head and added with a sigh.
"She went to the Jedi temple. Now if you'll excuse me, I want to finish reading a book..."
But he never finished the sentence. Kylo left him in the dust.
Just like Rey, Kylo had a foreboding feeling when he arrived in the living area near the temple. He noticed, almost immediately, the lack of human life and the electric fences and chargers. Something from one of the walls draw his attention. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was dried blood, a large quantity based on the immense spot.
"Whatever happened here, the attacker must've been very vicious. But what kind of creature could do something like this?" Kylo pondered.
Then it hit him, the feeling of fear floating in the air, suffocating him. It belonged to... and that's when he broke into a sprint towards the Jedi temple.
Rey was on the verge of crying. She didn't want to die, but it seemed fate had other plans. She was able to find a crevice in the wall to hide, but an iron bar scratched her arm and ripped the sleeve of her outer tunic.
And the smell of her blood drove the wolves crazy. Now they were trying to force their way in, shaking the already unstable wall from its foundation. Rey was worried that soon the wall will collapse and even her force abilities won't save her.
She wanted to find her parents, she wanted to spend more time with Mallie and she wanted to marry and have a family of her own.
Not with Kylo, but with someone who will cherish and accept her for what she was, a Kenobi and a Palpatine.
As if on cue, Rey heard a lightsaber springing to life and then she saw one of the wolves being thrown away, while the other two turned around and left the entrance of the crevice.
As soon as Kylo got into the yard, he saw three space wolves scratching and growling at some spot in the wall, trying to get inside it.
When he focused on that spot, he felt Rey inside, scared for her life and wounded.
"Damn!" he thought.
He tried to use his force powers to mind control the wolves, but his attempt ended in failure. These were no ordinary wolves. These were the types on which mind control didn't work.
So he ignited his lightsaber and force pushed one of the wolves away. Right away, the other two wolves noticed their comrade being thrown like a rag doll, their attention focusing on Kylo.
He took a fighting stance, swirled his cross lightsaber as if to mock the wolves and waited for their attack. He didn't need to wait long.
As soon as the wolves left the entrance of her hiding spot, Rey peeked out through the crevice and noticed how gracefully Kylo moved while fighting.
It wasn't like before, when he fought against her when she was disguised as Kira or when he fought against her on Starkiller base. On each of those occasions, Rey realized, he held back. He never came at her with full strength, and with this came a crushing conclusion. That no matter how hard she will train, Kylo Ren will be always stronger than her. And the only reason for being still alive in the aftermath of their confrontations was because he wished it so.
The strong roar of one of the wolves snapped her from her memory.
Rey watched as the wolf fell, encouraging her to get out and search for any weapon in the temple.
But, as she will soon learn, this is a decision she will come to regret.
After killing one of the wolves with his lightsaber, the one he threw earlier with the force, rose up, joining the one that was still standing. Kylo began walking back towards the stairs of the temple, hoping to bury the wolves at the entrance in the yard, under a pile of bricks and same trick he used years ago on the Elphrona planet against Luke's students, Tai and Voe. Unfortunately, his plan was thwarted by Rey's sudden appearance.
As soon as she got out from her hiding spot, two wolves emerged behind her, ones she was unaware of.
At that moment several things happened at once. One of the two wolves that were behind Rey roared and jumped towards her. At the same time she turned her head and dodged in order to avoid the attack. As soon as she was out of the peripheral vision of the first wolf, the other one hit her with his huge paw, in the stomach, sending her against the wall where she hit her head, leaving her unconscious and defenseless.
Kylo froze the two wolves that he was facing in their tracks and ran to Rey.
"Granddaughter, wake up!" a tender voice called out to Rey.
"Granddaughter, you have to help Ben!" the same voice insisted with urgency.
This was enough to rouse Rey from her slumber and the sight she witnessed before her shook her to the core.
Two wolves were buried under rubble while the other two were nowhere to be found.
Amidst all the destruction, a few feet in front of her, Kylo Ren was using his lightsaber for support, blood dripping from his black clothes.
As soon as she got up, his lightsaber deactivated on its own and Kylo fell to his knees, still looking in her direction. Then his body began to slump forward only for Rey to catch him in a tight embrace.
"Why did you do it?! Why did you protect me?!" Rey asked him as the rain started to pour on them, soon followed by thunder rumbling in the background.
The last sight Kylo saw through the visor of his mask, before the abyss took him was Rey's wet cheeks.
He wondered briefly if she was crying because she would miss him.
And then he knew no more.
On the planet Raisa, from the Alderaan system, a black masked figure, stopped dead in his tracks after receiving a telepathic message from his master.
"Yun, please protect Rey!"
A desperate plea. Uthar knew in that moment that something was wrong. Kylo hadn't called him by his real name since he became a Knight of Ren.
"Uthar Ren, it's something wrong?" a female voice asked him concerned.
"Harth Ren, we have to go to Coruscant. Something happened to Kylo Ren," Uthar added hastily.
On a large iron asteroid called The Home, which was the headquarters for the Dark Disciples, a gathered group of dark side users who forego the Sith rule of two and who served Snoke, a lone cloaked figure stood in a middle of a meadow, surveying the scene with cold eyes.
Suddenly, the cloaked figure hunched forward, putting a hand over his heart.
"Ben..." was all that that Darth Caedus, once known as Jacen Solo, whispered as his yellow eyes became brown for a brief moment.
Jaina and Anakin were dueling each other in a training session when both of them were overcome with pain.
"Ben..." they both whispered at each other with a lost gaze.
And for the first time in years, the four children of Han and Leia were connected again.
No matter how far away they were, no matter what paths each of them took, their bond still stood strong.
Author's notes:
I hope this chapter didn't make you cry. Too much, at least.
So what do you think about this chapter overall?
If you want to find more details about characters, elements and inspirational sources used for this chapter read this story on AO3 ( also someone was kind enough to make me an moodboard for the version of the story posted there).
Feel free to leave a review.
Until next time!