The attack begins in the dead of night.
Rey feels the force crack apart, warping and twisting. She squeezes her eyes shut, wanting to will what she knows is coming away. It does not work and his masked face appears in her mind.
Stay away from the ships and barracks, Rey. Don't be reckless.
Rey is gathering her items. She is in Leia's office where they spent the remainder of the day organizing her escape. They go through the motions of processing Rey for conspiring with Supreme Leader Ren. It is an unfortunate bureaucratic policy Leia has to follow. Rey understands, though.
She firmly believes her actions should not incriminate Leia. Holte and those who agree with him are building their own case against Rey, and she will not see Leia dragged down with her.
Rey speaks for hours into the recording device. The force bond, his deception, the forest, the throne room - all of it. It feels like a confession.
She does not know it will be sent to the archives where in decades to come others will listen to the story of Rey the scavenger and the mad Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.
When it is done Leia confiscates Rey's lightsaber, but it is temporary, only a formality. Leia will not send her away completely defenseless. The Falcon will wait for Rey in the woods - along with her saber, with supplies, with enough fuel to get her the hell out of here.
Leia urges Rey to rest for a while - to sleep, to eat, and she orders food for Rey with weary understanding. Halfway through her pregnancy and Rey is starting to feel it. The fatigue, the back pain, the restless nights. The baby's force energy - growing stronger everyday - worries Rey. But she can't waste energy worrying right now.
The homing beacon Leia gave her flashes on her wrist and she finishes packing. Rey slings her satchel over her back and runs outside.
She is met with unspeakable chaos.
There are enormous explosions where the evacuation ships are stationed. Windows shatter, smoke and fire rise into the air. Thousands of pieces of glass and steel, a deadly rainfall, shower down. Alarms - shrill and deafening- erupt throughout the base.
The First Order is here, swooping in and bombing the shit out of the Resistance.
The Resistance has trained for this, has run through countless drills to prepare for this inevitable kind of attack.
Inevitable Rey thinks, but she blames herself. He takes out his wrath on innocent lives because he wants her.
Rey pants through the smoke, fleeing past a block of apartment buildings when a whistle sounds through the air.
A bomb drops and a huge bite is taken out of the building - she hears screams. The sounds stop her in her tracks, she needs to run inside and search for survivors.
But the flutter - the tiny kick she feels in her body - she can't risk it.
You're a coward to bomb people while they sleep.
Rey careens around a corner, feet hitting the last of the pavement as she enters the woods.
Those aren't from us.
She glances up through the tree branches, squinting to get a better look at the low flying ships.
The Knights?
Yes, she hears Kylo answer her through the force. Surrender yourself Rey. It is not safe.
Not safe? She balks as she runs through the trees. If he wanted her safe he would not bomb them, would not unknowingly bring the Knights here. He would leave her alone. Her heart hurts at the thought of not seeing Rose, Finn, or Poe as she cuts through low brush. The thought of them getting hurt or worse...it is unbearable.
The Falcon is in her line of sight and renewed hope kindles inside Rey. All thoughts are banished from her mind as she sprints towards it.
Suddenly there is a familiar swooping sensation in her stomach, as if she misses a step on a flight of stairs. She grapples for something to steady herself but her feet continue to fall downward.
Rey feels something invisible wrap around her midsection and she stops in mid-air.
No. Please, no.
Her eyes clamp shut, she feels herself being pulled up and set on her feet again. Without thinking, she wraps her arms around what pulls her up, as though hoping for support. It is solid and strong. Against her cheek she feels and hears a heartbeat pounding as quickly as hers.
Kylo Ren.
Kylo tracks Rey from his TIE silencer. He pounds at the force, unrelenting until it splits and the connection beats between them once again.
It feels good. It feels like home.
The resistance tries to brace itself against a double assault - against the Order and the Knights. They trail Kylo here, he knows. He can sense their thirst for revenge.
Rey, however, is predictable. He knows her. He flies low, her life force calling to him.
It is the Falcon he sees first - hidden in a clearing. This can only be his mother's doing.
He leaves his TIE a mile away from the Falcon in the opposite direction - she cannot know he is this close.
He removes his mask and he waits.
Kylo hears her moving through the woods, her breathing harsh and ragged. She is moving too fast, she does not sense him as she brushes right past him.
Her haste costs her and she trips, about to fly forward into a ditch.
Kylo lazily turns his hand, stopping her mid-air. She grasps for something to hold onto - and it is him.
She looks up and meets his face. She screams.
"I told you not to be reckless, Rey. What would you do in the woods, pregnant, and with a broken ankle?"
She says nothing as he takes the satchel off her back, searching for weapons.
He finds baby clothes - and turns them over curiously in his hands.
"You call this being prepared for a baby?" He throws the clothes on the ground, onto the dirt. "No child of mine will wear rags like these."
Rey's eyes shoot daggers at him.
"They aren't rags. I made them."
"I can tell. They are fit for dirty poor scavengers - for the lowest of society. Not for any child of mine."
Rey tenses.
"I'm glad you're finally being honest about how you really feel about me."
He decides to punish her for leaving him.
"What do you want me to say, Rey? That I enjoy being attracted to a girl who spent her days digging through trash to survive? Who is trash? That it is your pretty face and your power that saves you? That if you were a man, if you were not so beautiful, I would kill you? I would kill you for the power you possess."
Kylo's words cut through Rey like knives. He knows instantly from the look in her eyes that they hit their mark.
"Do you have any idea," Kylo backs her up against a tree, "What the sound of just your voice does to me? What your tight little cunt does to me?" He roughly grips Rey by the forearms, his lips smashing against hers, his tongue pushing past her clenched teeth to the moist space within.
"Is this how you want me to talk to you?" Kylo breaks the kiss, out of breath. He tugs her closer to him.
"Is this how you want me to treat you? Do you want me to treat you like the monster you think I am? Keep you locked away and out of sight - take you out when I feel like playing with you? No one in the Resistance will help you now. They understand what you really are."
Discarded garbage. Dirty, discarded scavenger garbage.
Kylo pauses when the pain he feels radiating from her is overwhelming.
His violence is in his words. He knows everything about her, every perceived flaw, every vulnerability and he knows where to put the pressure. Kylo reminds Rey of her worst memories, of the times she felt most abandoned.
Rey opens her mouth to speak but only manages to gulp out a sob. She tries to wrap her arms protectively around her belly, around the baby.
"I can Rey. I will, if that is what you want. If you do not obey me. Please, don't make me treat you like that, don't make me say such terrible things."
Kylo lowers his hands from her forearms to rest on her hips. The tension leaves his face, his features soft when he speaks to her.
"You are a scavenger from nowhere, but I meant it when I said you're not nothing to me. You're everything to me. Please, Rey. Let me love you."
Rey slowly mirrors his movements and her hands tentatively find his waist.
Kylo's pulse quickens. It has been a long time since she initiated anything. He does not understand it. Does she like it when he is nasty to her, when he is reprehensible? Can she sense his self-hatred in the way he treats her?
Rey is not in a rush as her hands lightly caresses his back.
"Kylo," Rey lifts her chin up, her hazel eyes wide and wet, "I meant it. I meant it when I said you will never have us."
Rey's small hand closes around the handle of his saber, yanking it from the hilt of his belt. Kylo falls back, barely dodging it as she swings it around and ignites the blade.
Rey holds the tip of it just under his chin.
Kylo remains motionless and sneers.
"You won't kill me. You can't bring yourself to do it."
She could though, Kylo knows she is more than capable. He enjoys provoking her. Rey's fury burns with dangerous intensity and he feels the heat from the saber on his neck.
"I would rather see you suffer the consequences of your actions in a cell."
She forces him backwards, towards the Falcon, the saber never far from his body. She intends to bring him to the Resistance as a prisoner.
Kylo laughs cruelly.
"This is going to keep happening, Rey, if you don't kill me. These games we play of chasing each other."
Kylo's eyes flicker towards a shadow of movement behind her.
"Not this time," she says, "the Order thinks you're mad. The Resistance is stronger than ever. I might not kill you but I will wound you, Kylo Ren. I will stop you from trying to overpower me. Get onto the ship."
Fuck.
Just Fuck.
Who is she to speak to him this way?
Rey hisses between her teeth.
"Tell me you will behave, Kylo Ren. Promise me." She continues to prod him and he stumbles. The saber makes contact with the collar of his tunic - it sizzles.
Kylo knows he is catching a glimpse of the Rey who killed one of his knights. He does not appreciate hearing his words from her lips.
"Stop, Rey. This is not who you are."
Another flicker of movement, this time from up in the trees.
"Oh? Who am I, then?"
There is a break in Kylo's usually flawless tone when he speaks.
"Behind you, Rey."
She turns in time to see two former Knights of Ren silently drop to the ground from the trees. Kylo knows he can take both of them on but his chest tightens as soldiers appear behind his fallen Knights. He counts six soldiers - he can work with that - but they keep coming. Their numbers count to fifteen, thirty...and he stops keeping track. They are all armed.
Rey needs to escape.
"Give me the saber and get onto the ship," he orders.
Rey falters - Kylo senses she does not know what is worse - to be captured by the Knights or by him.
"Supreme Leader," a mocking voice fills the air. A Knight with a double ended saber approaches. "You seem to be at a disadvantage. And you," he turns to Rey, "are coming with us."
Rey stands very, very still.
"Come now, scavenger. Before I decide to cut that abomination from your body."
Kylo's heartbeat strangles in his throat when he hears the threat spoken to his Rey, to his son.
He senses Rey's defeat as she deactivates the saber.
Kylo is ready.
Without missing a beat, without a word, he sweeps out his arm and his lightsaber returns to his hand.
It does not do him much good - all of the might the Knights bring with them, the guards and the soldiers - they are focused on Rey. Kylo does not like the amusement that enters the Knights voice when he speaks.
"Thank you, Kylo Ren, for alerting us to this resistance base," he calls for a guard to tie Rey's wrists together, "Though, we did have some help from your side of things," he addresses Rey.
Kylo knows he means Holte.
"And thank you, Kylo Ren, for this lovely parting gift. I am looking forward to finding out why you are willing to destroy the galaxy for her. Why you enjoy her so much. I look forward to meeting your child. Don't think of moving, Supreme Leader - I will not hesitate to kill her if you do."
He is serious. Kylo watches helplessly as Rey is escorted onto their craft. The hatch closes.
He does not care that he is grossly outnumbered - he will fight for her. For his son.
The Knight's remaining soldiers close in on him. Kylo knows he is Rey's only chance - he bolts into the Falcon and prepares to chase their ship.
Don't.
He hears Rey's light tilt again - that accent.
I would rather take my chances with them than be alone with you.
Kylo ignores what her words do to his heart.
Rey can't prefer those demons to him. He has not been that horrendous to her. That unforgivable.
Has he?
will Kylo Ren ever not be an iDioT?
will Rey and the Knights open a bottle of bubbly and talk shit about Kylo or are they gonna be cruel to her?
thx for reading and commenting.