It was dusk, the sky dark with approaching evening when they arrived at their destination. Cole pushed Rey hard off the ramp. She tumbled towards stone, rolling onto her back with a groan. Cole laughed, standing over her. Rey said nothing, gave no reaction. Even if Kylo couldn't choose his battles, she could.
Scoffing, Cole gripped her arm, pulling her up. She wasn't the gristle and bone of Jakku now, but Cole treated her like her pilot doll, something to squeeze and push towards the column that stood high among the grass.
"Kneel," he barked, pushing on her shoulders when they reached it.
Rey knelt. For the moment, she would be docile, obedient. Fight only when made to. Just like her life on Jakku. Before the Resistance, before the Force, if her stomach rumbled and if she ached for family, she might've had a slip of her mask, but Unkar liked to prey on weakness for his negotiations. She learned quickly to keep the aches and the grief private, in the dark of her AT-AT.
Cole nudged the small of her back with the toe of his boot.
"This one's good," he said, scanning her like she were stock. He scanned Ren in the same way. "Check the pet."
Kylo was still unconscious. Every time he had shown signs of rousing, they'd made certain he wouldn't get up. Rey'd flinched at each blow, and they said she needed fattening. She took that to mean they meant to think her a coward who couldn't watch a man get hit. Rey watched them out of the corner of her eye, moving Kylo from the loading bay. They carried him, her prisoner, down the ramp and threw him down onto the ground before the column.
The column was the basaltic black of Ahch-To's caves, its height tall enough to be seen for miles. Rey tucked back a smirk. Perfect for a meeting point.
And now, it was time to wait.
The wind had picked up around them. Dusk became evening when finally, the buyers came. They approached the column on another small transporter, as old in design as the Peroenians' ship, but there were more of them.
Seven in all. They wore clothes of cotton robes which were tied at the waist by a leather belt. The clothes moved with the wind, the hems flapping around their bare feet. Paint in all colours covered their arms, though the shapes of their tattoos were unfamiliar.
The leader of the arrivals approached Cole. Rey allowed herself a small glance at them. She was a lithe woman, with eyes of black. Her hair was a blazing dark red, the shade a mixture of scorching fire and crimson.
"Outlander," was her greeting, with a smirk at the corner of her lips. Cole twitched, his fingers brushing over the knife at his side. The woman rolled her eyes. "Do not reach for your knife. You could've killed me years ago, and selling to me has already lowered your honour enough among your breed."
Rey lowered her eyes as the woman stepped forward. Her pale skirts pooled around her bare feet as she crouched before Rey. Rey felt the woman's long fingers clasp her chin. She tilted her head as the woman's hand demanded, but kept her gaze lowered, focusing on the woman's neck. It was longer than the Peroenian's, more graceful. Her muscles were supple, smooth lines underneath her dark skin.
"She's a fighter," the woman said decisively. She moved on. Standing in the grass next to Ren, Rey heard her chuckle as if in knowledge.
"Kylo Ren," she said softly. She reached out with her foot, pressing her heel to Ren's cheek. She rolled his head until he looked up to the sky. Dried blood marked his cheeks and mouth and nose. His brow was scuffed and bruised. His scar trailed down his cheek and neck.
"He killed one of ours," Cole snarled.
"And you give him to me to clean up," the woman said dryly. She stepped away from Kylo, returning to Cole. Her bare feet easily carried more authority than Cole's hard leather boots. "200 credits for both. 300 would be my offer, but I'm taking off 100 credits for damaged merchandise – on that, Cole, there'll be no negotiation."
"No negotiation," he said, with reluctance.
The woman turned on her heels, and there was a snap of her fingers. She spoke in an unfamiliar tongue. Wordlessly, Rey stood but remained in her place until they told her to move. She walked up the ramp into the loading bay, taking in her surroundings. The seven men and women loaded up the crates.
The second ship was not like that of the Peroenians. That was junk stitched together into one whole like her quadjumper on Jakku and her staff. That lay forgotten now among Luke's other trinkets—memories of his youth, side by side with General Organa and Han Solo. This was smooth-lined, built in the mind of a culture, a clan. The ship's walls were silver-grey with no levels to the design. The cockpit was at the head of the ship, a thick strip of glass the pilot's viewport.
Rey clenched her fists tight. She blankly looked over Ren's battered body. He lay now in the cocoon of a med bay, lit white. Two men, dressed in white, both with intricate designs painted onto the skin of their hands, attended him with medicine, bacta patches and gel. The woman, their leader, supervised them.
"My name is Thassa, of Station 3Z3," the woman said. Rey lifted her head to properly look at her.
Thassa approached, her arms crossed over her chest. She came to a stop before Rey.
"He is your enemy, I think." Thassa smiled, her teeth a brilliant white when she chuckled. The softer edges of her eyes crinkled with laughter lines. "You watch him so closely, you see. We are the Shorak, the true species of this planet."
Rey kept her eyes on Thassa. She was just a hair shorter than her, but her strength and authority lay in her calm posture. Her face was round-shaped, her lips delicate in their fullness. Wisps of thin material were wound around her upper arm in thin ropes, starting at her shoulder and coming to a point at her elbows. From there, tattoos took over. Circles and shaped vines began from an arrow shape, dancing across her skin, over her forearms and past her hand to wrap around her fingers.
Thassa tapped her fingers in a rhythm against her thigh. The tattoos on the back of her hand shifted like an ocean wave.
She was older in years. Yet she was not like the elders of Jakku. Beaten by sun and sand and competition.
It seemed to Rey, Thassa had grown all her life among greenery and trees.
"Rey," she said, causing Thassa to look at her. Her eyebrows shot up, buried in her hairline.
Rey cleared her throat. "My name is Rey of Jakku. Kylo Ren is my captive."
Thassa quirked an eyebrow. "Is that right?"
Rey dropped her gaze, swallowing. She listened to the hum of the engines, and the soft mutter of the medics.
"It was."
Cold shot through his bloodstream and for a moment, Kylo believed himself wounded again, and saw the scavenger, his captor , knelt over him. He scoffed, rolling onto his side and propping himself up with his elbow. The ground underneath him was stone, and smelt distinctly of urine.
His hair was soaked with water, clumped onto his neck and forehead.
He'd been recently washed, that much was clear so far.
His hands, ungloved, were cold, too.
Kylo blinked and glanced down his body. His chest was bare, his trousers brown cotton with a rope of red fabric tied around his waist.
So that was why he was cold.
"You have our captors to thank for your life."
Wiping his hair from his eyes, Kylo turned his head, searching for the scavenger.
He found her curled up on a bench tucked against the corner of the cell. She was wearing a brown tunic and black leggings. Every muscle in her body was tense and she sat with her feet pressed into the stone floor with her knees pressed together. Alert.
A silence, a breath, passed between them.
She lifted her eyes to his, pinning him.
"They wasted all their bacta on you."
More silence then, as she returned to glaring at the floor. Kylo lifted his fingers to his scar. The remnant of depleted resources, a symbol of his defeat, and the collapse of Starkiller. Kylo's lip curled when he felt smooth skin where once he'd felt the bumps and ridges of his failure.
They would regret that soon enough.
That attitude's why you got beaten, hissed the scavenger, her voice wormed inside his head. His mind was filled with her images of the first blow, and the Peroenian caught in the tentacle of a Brintak.
"You underestimate the Force, scavenger. You always have," Kylo snapped, climbing to his feet. There were no windows in their cell, and only one door, which, when Kylo tried it, he found to be predictably sealed shut.
"Our captors are the Shorak, and we're in Station 3Z3." The scavenger picked dirt from the fingernails of her left hand, flicking her eyes up to watch him. Kylo scoffed. He paced the width of the floor. "What I don't know," continued the scavenger, "is the name of this planet. Tell me."
Kylo examined her. He'd always found her dark eyes slightly threatening, like she was inviting all his secrets to be told. As she watched him now, there was a thread of cold sewed within it. She resented him for her getting into this situation. He couldn't deny her that resentment, to be fair. He also had little to lose giving over the name of this wretched planet.
"Giaca," he said, sighing. It would take two fleets of the First Order's troopers to take this station and rid the planet of the ancient rivalry between the Peroenions and the Shorak. Kylo clenched his fists tightly. It would take him nothing, if he concentrated his will and used his power as he was destined to do, as Snoke told him he was fated to do, to do the same.
"I know what the Force is…"—he whirled on the scavenger, frowning in the face of her words—"I've learned what I needed to learn. It's you who know nothing of it, Ren. The Force is not your ally. It is never your ally."
His thoughts were always too loud around her, and she read them with ease.
"You've barely begun," Kylo replied, bringing their situation back to the familiar battleground.
His uncle, his mother, his father— they'd all treated him like he was destined to lose himself to the Force, the only thing that defined him.
Snoke told him that the Force wasn't something bigger than him. It was merely a weapon, wielded by the chosen. It had made everything make so much sense, to think of it as within his hands, a thing he could mould, rather than something that could mould him.
For the first time, under Snoke's tutelage, the uncontrollable fear finally meant something.
But every time they met, the scavenger spoke increasingly as if the Force was nothing like a weapon. Neither, she seemed to think, was it an identity.
She would speak as if the Force was neither something to be wielded or a definition of a body. It was like she saw it as something unknowable that lived and breathed in its own space, and they were simply vessels to accommodate it. Such thoughts put him off-kilter, made his axis tilt until his head swam.
They scared him.
So he brought it back to the simplicity. The Dark, and the Light. A conflict which would always be far older than they. She, the Light. Hardened by the ocean air, toned from training and knowledgeable but with the naivety of the Light buried deep within.
Snoke would've delved inside her naivety, and carved it out. He would've shown her the galaxy as it truly was; chaotic, shattered across stars and systems. Only the Dark side of the Force, coupled with the brutal weapons of the First Order, would bring it back together.
That was their routine. From planet to planet. Closer and closer, circling each other. Building up to something that felt too close to her definition of the Force.
"They know who you are," the scavenger said, a shattering of the silence between them and the routine. "And they're prepared for any kind of attack. Believe me, if you fight them, you'll die."
A twinge ran over Kylo's jaw. Bacta did much to erase the mistakes of the physical body. The mental body, however, the pulse that lived side by side with his blood, fractured at every failure. Even the scavenger, he was sure, carried scars. He reached out into the Force, searching.
She was intent on survival. On seeing this through to the end.
Such were the burdens of a captor.
The door shunted and clicked behind him, and its motors creaked from lack of grease. This was a place drowned in years.
When he'd first seen it, from the mouth of Maruuk's Nook, it had seemed fresh and brilliant. Dazzling, underneath Giaca's sun.
A broad-shouldered male, pale with a shock of rich blue hair, entered. He carried a blaster rifle on his shoulder, and his face was marked with a tattoo.
"Follow me," he ordered.
Kylo glanced to the scavenger. The Force crackled and sparked within him, every fracture aching. He breathed and it mellowed. He hated to admit it, but she was right. Better for him to obey, for now.
She led. He followed.
The jailer led them up shallow steps, through two sets of high arched doors that cranked and hissed, out to sunlight. Rey blinked, shading her eyes from the sun. It was a dust bowl, golden dirt surrounded by shallow levels of seating set in dark grey stone. Behind them, the doors cranked shut.
Eight outlanders stood in a line at the far end of the arena. Two Twi'leks looked to each other and no-one else. A human-like Bimm stood alone, its head bowed in peaceful compliance. The rest were humans outright, some skinny and undernourished like she had once been. Others were clearly soldiers, with mouths already curled into a snarl, their hands ready for war. Rey walked forward as the jailer urged. She glanced at weapons arranged in a metal stand off to the side; each weapon gleamed, freshly cleaned and sharp.
Ren stared ahead as the jailer commanded them where to stand, how to stand. Rey felt the Force simmer between them, a roll of thunder before lightning. She began to turn to him but hesitated. He'd found her eyes. Seen her gesture. He glanced down to her hand, halfway to his.
Rey snatched it away, tucking it behind her back.
The jail doors opened again. Thassa was no longer in the soft white robes in which Rey had met her, but a stiff collared shirt. On her hands, she wore black fingerless gloves. Her hair was tied back into a high braided bun by thick rope.
Thassa stopped before the line. She examined them all, passed muster on their forms and posture. The space between her brows creased with a frown. Her lips thinned.
"You are here to kill. You will kill." She walked the length of the line. "First, you shall train. Your life will be nothing but training. When you are not training, you will eat and you shall sleep. Even then I expect you to be thinking of your training, and what it is you have still to learn. Those weapons there? As you become more skilled, you will get closer to choosing which weapon will be yours. Until then, you are children. And until you are reborn into a warrior worthy of us, you shall work with the weapons of children."
Thassa clicked her fingers. The jailer and another walked forward, carrying carved weapons. Ageless designs, with patterns carved into the hilts of the wooden swords and the wooden bows. Only the rounded edges, the flat ends of the arrows and swords and spikes, stopped them from being lethal. They'd bring injuries, but not death. Rey doubted Thassa would let any battle training advance that far.
Thassa clicked her fingers again, aiming at the human on the far left. The human was a young woman, fair and brunette, and skinny. Her hair fell to her neck. She stepped forward.
"Pick a weapon."
The woman nodded. As her fingers clasped the hilt of a sword, she paused. Her attention was caught by Ren. Rey held her hands at her waist. Hatred poured into the woman's look. A bitter smile crept onto her lips.
She returned to the line. Ren looked to Rey.
"So much for not fighting," he muttered. Rey slipped him a glare. He shrugged in return, and for a moment, he looked like his father. She bit back a smile.
One by one, each captive chose their weapon. The Bimm chose a bow and arrow set too large for him. The first of the two Twi'leks, green-skinned, chose a wooden mace.
The staff Rey chose and held between her fingers didn't feel like her quarterstaff, weighted and without flex. It was lighter on one end than the other, and the wood was chipped from previous bouts. If she got caught in a fight, relied on her reactions more than her decisions, the blow wouldn't land.
Contented, Thassa stepped back five paces. She rubbed her fingers together, thoughtful.
"Let's truly see you. One strike means you'd be dead, if you weren't children playing with toys. If you carry on after you're out, I won't take it as bravery, but as foolishness. Fight."
Click. The sound of her fingers snapped and echoed.
The two Twi'leks ducked into forward rolls, one swiping out to the left, the other swiping out to the right. Both of them fought with balletic savagery, not the hard swings and thrusts of a Jedi.
The green-skinned Twi'lek felled the Bimm; the blue-skinned by her side lashed at the ankle of a male human with a wood handled whip. With a grunt, she tugged. The human male yelled out as he fell.
"Dead!" Thassa shouted. The green-skinned Twi'lek focused on Rey. There was a grin in her eyes. Slowly but surely, she swung the mace, every arc growing larger and larger. Rey dodged, moving rapidly back as the green-skinned Twi'lek swiftly bent, throwing the still swinging mace in her direction. Rey dodged again, falling into a defensive stance, her feet an equidistant apart. She felt the staff's weight. It flexed as she swung out with a grunt, just scuffing the left side of the Twi'lek. Thassa gave no declaration; not a hit.
"Give me your name," the Twi'lek demanded, sliding out from underneath Rey's second swing.
"Rey," she panted, her eyes flitting towards Ren. His two hands were gripped tight around his choice of weapon; a warspear. He was fighting another human, winning even without the Force by his side. In the corner of her eye, she saw the Twi'lek before her swing out. Rey stumbled back, her back hitting the dirt. The mace's flattened spikes ghosted over her shin. Her staff tumbled from her palm.
The Twi'lek approached, holding the mace by its heavy wooden chain. She tilted her head.
"Give me yours," Rey bit out, rolling onto her stomach, scrabbling in the sand for the staff. A heavy boot pressed hard down on her back. Her yell split through air, the sound jagged and sudden.
"Dia," said the Twi'lek. Once before, had Rey met this breed of alien. Subservient, the male had been, and quiet to the orders of his master, who preened to the crowd of Niima Outpost at the prize he'd won in a gambling game in a casino.
This female was the fire of Jakku. The sun that blazed overhead. Rey stretched her arm underneath the pressure of the Twi'lek's foot. Her fingers brushed the staff. The Force thrummed, beating against her ears. The staff trembled and twitched. Rey clenched her fist.
Peroenians—they'd known Ren as a Force user, the enforcer of the First Order, and they'd almost killed him for it. She could not sit idly and assume the Shorak naively held the opposite of whatever their rivals believed.
Rey looked over her shoulder. The Twi'lek raised the mace, high above her head. Rey closed her eyes, bracing herself for the impact.
The weight of the Twi'lek disappeared. She heard a cry, and a thud. Rey hurried to her feet, grabbing the staff. She whirled round. Ren stood before her, within the crowd, his warspear at her feet. Dia lay in the dirt, knocked out.
"Death," shouted Thassa above the chaos. Rey caught her eye. She would forgive the rescue, once. A crash, of metal and iron together, made her look away.
At the stand, the metal weapons lay scattered. The fair brunette held now the Bimm's wooden bow and a metal arrow. She tucked the metal arrow into the bow, aiming it. Her target, stood within the melee, was sure. Ren's head.
Her face stilled. Her mouth formed the shape of one word.
"Tuanul."
Rey's staff slipped from her palms. "Kylo!"
Everything went black.