The wind was warm. Temperate. Strands of her hair caught in the breeze, swirling against her cheeks and lips. For a moment it was another unchanging night on Jakku, she was sat in the sand and watching the ships taking off, landing. Wondering if, perhaps, one of them contained her family. Wondering how many more scratches she must mark.
Rey batted her eyes open, taking in the sun above. The acrid scent of the smoke. Beeps and sparks of failing machinery. TIE fighter pilots, flung forward on impact out of their ships and lying awkwardly like in a restless sleep among long grass. One's helmet had cracked and split. She saw their mouth open against the grass, with blood glossed over the teeth.
How willing they were to chase her down, die for the First Order.
Her vision clearing, Rey's hands flew to her safety belt. She undid it and nimbly climbed from the cockpit, rolling onto her back among the grass.
The wind picked up, batting her clothes against her form, stinging her wounds. With a groan, she shifted, sitting up. The Force had been with her. She was barely wounded, with only bruises on her legs and scratches on her face and arms. Rey sighed, burying her face in her hands, brushing her fingers through her hair.
A familiar kind of despair touched her mind.
Ha, kid. Careful there. A grin, and black curls, little hands batting the air. A bed below and the soft air of a city blowing through an open window. You still got a lot to learn.
Rey frowned, gingerly standing up.
"Han?" Impossible. But she knew of memories. She knew how they manifested themselves in the Force. Pictures, snatches of words and sentences thought forgotten but simply buried away. Rey stepped forward, wincing. A pain permeated her left foot. Lifting the weight off of it, she limped towards her fallen TIE fighter. Their fallen TIE fighter.
Ten others were scattered around the valley, and her eyes picked up more bodies, strewn amongst the grass and slumped in their seats.
She crept around to the armourer's seat.
The glass was shattered. Kylo Ren sat slumped, limp and still, in the seat. His safety belt was still on, and blood dripped from his mouth. Her heart beat fast, but somehow, she knew he wasn't dead. Something in the Force would've changed, she would have felt it.
(After all, she felt every strike of his lightsaber and the burn of every injury they inflicted on one another. Each of those blows was harder than the last; she didn't dare think what the blow would be like if one of them finally, finally bested the other in combat.)
She reached forward and undid the safety belt.
Ren's eyes snapped open. Rey flinched back, ready to grab her saber or stumble back onto the grass, waiting for him to begin the battle.
His mouth curled into a snarl. The cut on his bottom lip bled more as he prepared to speak.
She grabbed the saber at her hip and thumbed it on. Ren paused as she held it to his throat. The blue hummed. His dark eyes were reflected white by the hue.
For a moment, she regarded him with the hate with which he viewed her. It was an empty contempt, mismatched with the pain of his injuries flooding into his thoughts, and hers. She, or Luke, had wounded him badly on Ossus. A strike to his gut had marked his skin, burned away part of his robes and left his torso bare, displaying the wound for all to see. He wore no cape now; it had been abandoned during their battle.
"I could leave you here," she said. Restrain him, trap him with the Force and leave him. Ren laughed. The sound was deep and silken where she expected high and strained. Every encounter they'd shared, he had been this way; nothing about him matched. He was simply a collection of broken things.
"Not exactly the honourable thing to do, not for a Jedi," replied Ren. Rey's anger spiked at his words. She jerked the lightsaber closer to his chin, and he tilted his head up, avoiding the threat. He looked like his mother when she was faced with opposition, seeking violence instead of peace.
Rey clenched her free hand tight into a fist, breathing hard.
She retracted her lightsaber, attaching it back at her hip.
"I'm not a Jedi," she said, turning on her heel. "Nor am I a scavenger."
She threaded her path through the fallen pilots and ships, all scorched with the entry into the planet's atmosphere. Her arms slammed against her sides, and her whole body quivered, trapped.
Force bind.
Behind her, she heard hissed groans, curses foreign to her ears, then his footsteps. She battled against the bind, trying to take a step forward. The bind strengthened, seeping past her clothes and her skin to trap the muscles her legs and arms.
Ren circled her until he stood opposite her.
She fought the bind harder, but she could only gasp noiselessly as it held firm. Ren's split lip curved into a dangerous smile.
It widened as he glanced over the valley. His eyes skipped over her as he scanned the landscape behind her before his attention made its laconic return to her. His smile turned wry.
"I've been to this planet before," he said. He winced, lightly brushing his gloved hand over the wound to his gut. The cut from the lightsaber, Rey observed, was shallow. Deeper and his guts would've spilt out. (She slammed a door on that thought.) "There's a network of caves on this planet. One is large enough to hold a small freighter."
He dropped the bind. Her trembling legs collapsed underneath her, and she crumpled down to her knees, before his feet. Rey pressed her hand into the grass as she gulped back swathes of crisp air and the scent of smoke.
Ren dropped into a crouch before her.
"Ever captured someone before, scavenger?"
Rey lifted her brow and found his eyes. Her mouth turned downwards, a dark frown.
Even without the Force, she would know his plan. Find the caves, find a ship, steal the ship and fly off whatever rock they had landed on. His arrogance thread through her animosity. Her fingers curled against the grass into a fist.
The more he felt her hatred, the less he would know her thoughts. She would make it a vivid thing, a snarling spitting creature. Behind that wall, she rapidly made plans. She would go along with his plan. Subdue him then, and take him to General Organa. It was not her place to make the punishment, but the Resistance.
If she punished him now, she would be no better than the Jedi of old.
Rey shook her head, breaking the connection. Her eyes, raking over her clenched fist and the grass between her fingers, flicked back up to him.
His look was passive. He held out a hand. She took it and stood.
"West," she said, and west they went.
He waited until it was her turn to sleep in the small spot they had made their camp before he let his thoughts wander. Whatever connection they had, whatever line linked them, it was dangerous to think around the scavenger. She had infected him since the interrogation on Starkiller and part of him hated her for it. At first, it had been a capsule, his hatred of the scavenger, his whole purpose poured into it. Yet with every defeat, every victory on both sides, it had become a goal not to battle but simply find her. For him, for the First Order. Find the girl and they would find the Resistance.
But the scavenger was clever. She led them all a merry dance alongside Skywalker, led him to far-flung places deep within the Outer Rim and the Deep Core. He had to wonder if she had planned it all. To chip away at his purpose until it was a minute part of him and the rest a nebulous separate.
He glanced down at his palm, where he cradled his lightsaber, brushing his thumb over the hilt, the place where he knew the crystal lay. The heart of it, cracked. Even his power, Snoke had told him, could not be contained by a mere kyber crystal.
Kylo sighed. He let his saber tumble from his fingers onto the grass.
Sometimes he wished he could stop the madness. This nonsense that made Snoke look at him like he had come from the lowest levels of Coruscant.
He pushed his hair back from his face. The night wind, stickier than the day's, brushed over his forehead.
"We'll stop here."
Kylo tilted his head in the direction of the sound. Basic came from the east, a few metres away. Gruff like a Peroenian. The Shorak, though no less brutal, were softer in their speech. They think it makes them better than those Peroes, explained a memory, bleeding from its box. Kylo shook his head.
"Not now," he said under his breath. He grabbed his lightsaber and slowly stood, inching towards the sound.
"You think we'll see Brintak? I hate them. I heard they tear your flesh off, skin you alive. Only then do they gnaw into your bones. They leave the heart for last." The second voice was higher, younger and eager than the first, but carried the Peroenian gruff.
"That kind of sight would send any creature, Shorak or Peroenian, so mad they wouldn't be able to tell those kind of stories," the first voice barked in response. "Shut up and sleep."
If Brintak was all that concerned them, then they hadn't encountered the crash site in the north valley. Kylo dropped to a crouch, peering through the trees.
The group were five, all pale-skinned, one of typically skinny build and the others muscular for their breed. They wore leather and rags, and they all carried the Peroenian hair, a dirtied pale grey-yellow. Still talking, they sat just on the edge of the forest with the stars high above them.
Above, a rustling. Kylo flicked his eyes up, scanning the dark branches. Brintak. Kylo glanced over his shoulder at the scavenger. His captor. Her grey jacket was her pillow, and her hands were tucked underneath her cheek.
She was lucky the Brintak were only curious tonight.
He brought his attention back to the Peroenians. He watched them talk. One whispered something, gestured, and the four others laughed uproariously. One honked in his humour.
Kylo returned through the trees to the scavenger.
She was laid on her side but awake on his return. He found her hugging her knees. She craned her neck to look in the direction he had gone. Kylo sat cross-legged in the grass, letting his robes fall either side of his legs. The material chafed at his wound. He pressed his palm against the skin, willing the pain to leave.
The scavenger was looking at him.
"Concerned?" he asked.
"Pleased," she bit back. He grinned. The pain from his wound snaked up through his body, clearing his eyes of sleep. For the time being, fatigue faded.
He listened to the scavenger lie in the grass. Her little sighs, moans, the general habits everyone had when they made themselves sleep.
Her shallow breaths told him she wasn't really asleep at all.
Kylo switched, for the next few hours, between half-listening to the Peroenian group and her sleeping. As the night's heat wore on her breaths became deeper, the heat familiar to her no doubt, until they were practically nothing at all, her slumber mixing in with the humid breeze.
The Peroenian group, as it neared Giaca's dawn, moved off north in the direction of the station. Presumably to bargain and glean a peek behind its high walls. Kylo shifted away from his spot, crawling towards where the scavenger slept. As she'd slipped further down, her whole body had become tighter; it had curled up within itself, her legs brought up to her chest and her arms held tight around her arms. Her eyelids flickered rapidly. Dreaming.
Kylo sank onto the grass, lying on his back.
Now dawn approached, the branches were discernible from the shapes of Brintak. Their hulking masses moved with grace from branch to branch, the leaves always rustling while they jumped and swung, their silhouettes lit white by their rows and rows of teeth sharp enough to pierce any bone. They hissed, the barb-tipped tentacles at the side of their heads sliding out from the shadows, curious about what prey could be caught.
Finding nothing, as Kylo lay still and the scavenger slept (on Jakku, perhaps, the dangers were enough that she learned to sleep through them), the multiple Brintak retreated into the home of hollowed out tree trunks.
Kylo closed his eyes. Giaca's single yellow sun was beginning its slow, slow approach over the horizon. Sunlight scattered through the toroc trees.
The crash of waves filled his ears. Salt on his tongue, hard rock underneath his gloved palm.
Ah.
On one knee, he knelt before Ahch-To at the bottom of its ancient stone steps. His fingers were outstretched on the rocky surface. His cape flapped out behind him. Tilting his head up, he felt the direction of the breeze. It whipped past him, whistling over the cliff face. The whole island loomed above him and his fighter. He stood and made his way up. His lightsaber crackled red in his palm. There was no thought in his mind of stopping. Of turning back.
He reached the top, and there she was. Sleeping still on Giaca, but moving here. Throwing the sharp blue blade of his grandfather's this way and that in smooth arcs and jabs. The ocean glittered blue behind her. In front of her, her master. His uncle.
Kylo snarled. His thumb moved over the hilt of his lightsaber.
It crackled red, sparks landing on the damp stone and dying.
"Rey," said his uncle, drawing back his sand-coloured hood, catching her attention. She whirled around. Her brown eyes matched the flushed cheek, Kylo noted. They shone with the effort of training, channelling the Force.
All at once, they were in a cave. Her hand—his hand, their shared hand—touched a page. Their breaths hitched in their throat, as their fingers brushed over the ancient ink.
A snowflake, on her forefinger.
They frowned. They brought their hand closer and examined the thing. A snowflake. Another, as they turned their hand upwards towards the sky of the cave. Snow on their tongue as they looked up, watching the flurry surround them.
A rumbling and the walls of the cave, their master at their side, all crumbled.
"What's happening?" they cried, in one voice, stumbling back then running forward, on another planet. Their legs pushed a path through the snow of the base—Starkiller Base, were their thoughts, you should've killed him, why didn't you kill him —and they called one name.
"Finn!" Their voice echoed. They found him lying unconscious. Dead, he might be dead—he can't be dead, not him, not Finn— their hands stained with blood as they tried and attend to him—
Brown eyes snapped open. The scavenger, awake in the risen dawn, snarled. Her upper lip curled. With a Loth-cat grace, she scrambled for him. Kylo rolled out of the way, shaking his head of her dream. On all fours, she glared at him as he lay on his side, his upper body propped up by his hands in the grass.
She was the one that stood. He followed rapidly. Her body was already in the stance of an upcoming duel. Her fists clenched. Her breaths heavy.
It was not her saber that she used.
Her Force signature pushed forward. Kylo gasped, his head thrown back. Behind both of their eyes, his mother cooed over his infant form. He cried and cried, until she scooped him up into her arms and settled him, fat pink baby him, against her chest. Her eyes. Brown, like the earth of Chandrila, with the strength of durasteel. She looked down upon him in her arms with that strength. A fighter, her mouth moved the shapes of the words but the voice was lost to the image.
Wretched scavenger!
Kylo flung forward his hand, circling the Force around her neck. She gasped and gaped. Her neck contorted and twisted, the weight of his choke bearing down on her. It bore down on him too, he realised. His gut wound gnarled and twisted; pain, pain, pain—Kylo growled and flung the weight of his power behind the choke. The girl needed to learn the value of discretion.
The pain in his gut still soared. Above all, the Force, the scavenger. Kylo's body trembled and wobbled.
He couldn't hold her. The more he held her, the more his wound sank past skin deep and into his blood. He stared at the scavenger. She was fighting valiantly, her back arched and her left hand outstretched as she tried to pay him back in kind.
He withdrew. She coughed, gaining back her breaths. He expected her to speak with rage as her cough faded away and her composure returned. Expected her to light her saber and attempt to injure him in revenge, or recompense.
"You think of your mother."
Those were her only words in the silence, as leaves fell around them, fluttering in the wind. She swung her eyes up to stare at him. Examining him. Kylo turned on his heel. He scanned the horizon through the trees. It had to be midday now.
He glanced down. He brushed a leaf from the toe of his boot.
"It'll be best if we stay out of one another's heads," he said. He edged closer to the forest's edge, glancing west.
"You're always in my head."
Kylo whipped round. His captor was busying herself, unfolding her grey jacket. She picked up her lightsaber from underneath it and slid it into the holster around her hips. She slid the grey jacket onto her shoulders.
"You're in mine," Kylo replied. It was not a great truth, only a matter of fact. He nodded out to the horizon. "So, I suppose we continue west?"
His knee underneath him buckled.
The world underneath him swirled. It fell into slow motion. Up, down. Landscape, portrait. His cheek pressed into warm, soft grass. Flakes of old blood touched his tongue.
The burning began. A burn like a slow fire at the end of the night, that he'd sat before on Chandrila when his mother negotiated until the dawn, and his father watched him out of the corner of his eye. It licked over his torso, wrapped around his neck and brushed the hollow of his cheeks.
It was difficult to tell what was real. The fire; his father's eye; the hands of the scavenger, tugging him towards her. The grass on his back, or the voice of his mother.
A palm cracked against his cheek. Kylo blinked. The world stopped moving, stopped shifting. Reality looked him plainly in the face.
Reality wasn't a beauty, but hard-edged by sand and sea and rocks. Her brown eyes narrowed as they scanned his body. Her fingers tore off his tunic, leaving him with only the black undershirt.
"No," she breathed. His eyelids fluttered as he glanced down. Her fingertips were dipped in blood. Fresh and old. Her eyes found his.
"You're my captive, Ren. We'll go west when I say."
Despite the surety in her tone, her hands hesitated to touch his wound. With a hard breath, she pressed her hands to it, the cauterised edges. Kylo hissed as warmth flooded him. His hearing focused on one sound. Her slow meditative breaths.
She was healing him.