Author's Note: Thanks for reading this old piece from me. Hopefully, if you read any newer pieces from me (which will be posted in the coming days), you'll be able to see the progress I've made - like not dropping plot threads at the drop of a hat! I was originally going to write a sequel to this fic, but unfortunately, I lost the outline when I bought a new laptop a couple of years back and I still can't remember where I was planning to go with this :(
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It took three days in all to get to the canyons. Giaca's sun lit the canyon stone in crystallised yellow-gold. Rey grunted as she threw her arm up, sinking it into the stone. The Force filled her body, urging her to continue.
Beside her, Kylo climbed alongside. Rey adjusted her footing, readying herself. She launched her arm up, finding a holding. She pulled herself up. They were nearing the top of the caves.
The surface of Giaca was far, far below. She looked down, down past her feet at the distant green. The thick toroc trees. Above, the Brintak within couldn't be heard. She saw the rustle of the treetops as they jumped from branch to branch.
The wind whipped around. Rey spat against the hairs falling on her bottom lip, shaking her head. She climbed faster.
Finally, her palm slammed against the craggy rock. She craned her neck and grinned. The mouth of the cave.
She heaved herself up and stood underneath the roof of the cave, at the line where the sunlight became a shadow.
Kylo, reaching the mouth of the cave soon after, stood at her side. Amongst his confusion, his jumbled thoughts and memories, she felt a brief shot of exhilaration, the same as hers.
"There'll be a ship in here, no doubt," Kylo said, the exhilaration fading into determination as he turned on the ball of his foot, heading further into the cave. Rubbing her neck, Rey followed on, falling into step with him.
All along the walls of the caves, entryways led to hollowed out paths and carved steps. Rey narrowed her eyes. Unlit wooden braziers lined those walls, snaking down the path of the steps. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she saw more than scraps. She saw holo projectors, and holo discs, scattered. Remnants and the scent of rotted food; meats and berries.
The toe of her boot brushed against something soft. Rey paused. She sank down to a crouch. Her fingers clasped the item and she stood, peering at it.
Her throat went dry. It was a little doll, with a sewn on face and wearing orange flight gear.
She looked up and found the flash of fire. She gasped, dropping the doll and stumbling backwards. The firelight advanced. Rey remained where she was, blinking and becoming accustomed to the gloom. A female was stood before her, peering at her.
"My name is Asori," said the female. Wind battered the flame, lighting up her features. She was young, only a few years older than Rey. "Who exactly are you?"
"I sense the two of you have already encountered my siblings, and my father." Kylo's vision blurred as he blinked, coming to. He was surrounded by the dim of a ship's cockpit, light provided by an orange flame above. It moved in the dark, back and forwards then closer as a face appeared. The face of the woman that he'd found, standing on the ramp of this ship, a ship hidden away at the back of the cave.
She smiled, drawing her palm against his forehead, down his temple. He realised then, that he was on his side, the cockpit floor cold against his skin. His wrists were trapped by a pair of cuffs. Kylo peered around the cargo bay. Its design carried influence of the Empire, but was clearly an independent vessel. A smuggler's vessel.
"Sorry for the cuffs," said the woman, releasing him. Kylo groaned as he moved, trying to sit up. He felt Rey's hands on his shoulder, guiding him up. Righted, sinking his head against the cockpit wall, Kylo sighed.
"Do you need light? That's the one thing this ship can do," the woman said with a laugh. A flick of a switch, or the press of a button, and the cockpit flooded with white light, harsh enough that he winced. "Again," continued the woman, settling into the pilot seat. "I apologise for the cuffs. It has been a long time since anyone but myself has been within this cave. And a Shorak must defend their territory."
Rey had not left his side, but knelt beside him, her hand still on his shoulder. Kylo ran his eyes over the woman sitting in the pilot seat before them. The controls were long unused. Perhaps even without the correct parts, going by her words.
The woman had the Shorak muscle and tattoos. The most prominent was on her face; covering the right side, a tangle of leaves and veins, the bronze-shaded paint framed her purple eyes and crawled across the bridge of her nose. Her cheeks were arched, her shaven hair brown. No silk, no leather. Coarse wool only. Around her hip, a holster. Attached to it were a dagger and a blaster.
Force sensitive. The isolation rolled off of her in waves.
Kylo ran his eyes over the cockpit floor. From broken open crates spilled old weapons and older ship parts. Kylo quirked an eyebrow, sweeping his attention back up to the woman.
She looked at Rey, who was stoic while the woman peered at her—examined her. She was trying to deduce them both. Their strengths, weaknesses. The reasons why she should keep them alive.
Rey was good at surviving, but he could do it just as well.
Kylo dipped inside her head.
Asori, daughter of Talak. Twenty five and banished a year cycle ago. Separated from a child, a wife. She possessed a hatred for the Shorak, her own species. A hatred for her siblings—
"Stop it!" Asori hissed, eyes blazing and stood, looming over him. "I feel you in my mind, Jedi, and that is not your place. Do that again, and I'll do worse than simply cuff you."
"We are not Jedi," Rey said, breaking her silence, edging into the fray. "We are banished, just like you, from 3Z3. Under the orders of your father."
Asori mellowed, but her jaw remained tight, her hackles raised, her whole body alert. She dropped to a crouch before them, her fingertips pressed together. Her eyes flicked between them both. They settled on Rey.
"I kept my skills, my power, under lock and key. Deep down within my body, my heart." She poked her chest. Sadness flooded her eyes, but she carried no tears. Only a weight. "Here. Then somebody threatened my wife, my child. A Peroenian."
Asori spat the name. Her sadness hardened, determination swallowing it up. Spitting it out, her tone changing. "I was not going to sit back and let them be taken, kidnapped and taken off my planet, their home, so they could be sold as slaves. I saved them with my power. In return, my father and my siblings voted for my exile. They were kind enough not to consider execution. I see they gave you that kindness."
"Thassa pushed hard for that mercy," Kylo said slowly, watching as Asori's face shifted again, slowly, gradually transforming into a smile. Groaning, she stood. She righted the crates, beginning to throw weapons and parts into them.
"Apologies for the mess," she said as she worked. She paused when she found a comms unit, feeling its weight in her hand. She scratched the nape of her neck, giving a short, soft laugh. The sound was traced with affection. "Thassa gave you mercy. My sister is only merciful when it suits her agenda."
"We gathered that," Rey said, slipping Kylo a smile. Then she stood. Took a step towards the cockpit. Asori moved fast, aiming her blaster at Rey. Kylo darted up, fist clenching.
"This is an Allanar N3, isn't it?" Rey asked, quietening them both. Asori kept her blaster aimed, but her grip relaxed. Her shoulders sank, her eyebrows tilting up in surprise. "Three engines, multiple laser cannons. And none of it works. You've tried, but you need help."
Rey frowned. Her head tilted just slightly to the left. There was grace in her quietness, gravity in her low, curious tone.
"You need help to get off Giaca."
"I don't need your influence," Asori hissed. Her grip tightened, the silence grew taut, shifted closer around them. Kylo sank back into the shadows. This woman was frightened. He didn't need to dip inside her head to see she had lived the last year cycle hidden away, wasting away her thoughts on a half-formed plan.
"I'm just saying the truth," Rey said, insistent. "Do you truly mean it? You would leave your family?"
"She has no choice," Kylo said from the shadows. Rey turned her head, staring at him. Slowly, he stood. He kept his attention between the two women before him. "Do you? You've barely thought about them since your banishment. Because you feel if you do – your anger will be so great, you fear who you will become if you relinquish yourself to it."
As was the same with every creature, every human living within the universe. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rey, stoic and still in the face of his words.
"So what are you hoping for? You help me build this ship, and I make some room for passengers? Hundreds of civilisations have tried to make something of Maruuk's Nook. I wouldn't know where to start. The crates you see here? Lucky breaks, courtesy of clumsy Peroes."
"Useful then, to have another two pairs of eyes." Rey stepped forward, her smile warm but firm. Asori looked between them. Her glare faded, the lines in her brow folded back into a smooth air of examination. Consideration, like they were once more about to become fighters, and it was her sister looking upon them.
She hooked her blaster against her belt. "First sign of trouble, I'll be delivering you to the Brintak."
The first battle they faced after Starkiller had crumbled, when they fought on the sand of a planet far from the Resistance and the First Order, Rey had known then that Kylo Ren was as much of a survivor as she. He had faced her on that nameless planet. He had triumphed over her, held his spitting, crackling lightsaber above her chest where she lay. She had closed her eyes, listened to the sound of the planet's black water, waited.
"There is no triumph in killing you here, scavenger," he'd whispered in her ear, mask off and his breath hot on her neck. Then he had left her.
He stood now in the small quarters Asori had given to them with his hands folded behind his back, like a soldier who had not yet fought any wars, or indeed, any battles. Rey sank onto the one bunk, crossing her legs, smudging her thumb across her bottom lip. Her eyes flicked between him and the floor.
So much had happened. Their battles were another world, leading them down one path amongst many. In one, she wore black and held his hand while the universe burned. In others, they fought to save those same stars.
The Force simmered underneath her skin all this while. At the beginning, it had been encased within her, blooming when she struck hard and dodged quickly. A weapon used for good. Then she had witnessed how others had worshipped the Force, how Luke Skywalker now worshipped the Force. It moved beyond weaponry, beyond her arsenal. It began to surround her.
Then she had run. Run from it all, leading him through galaxies at the request of General Organa.
"Let him find you," the general had said.
"My mother ordered it?" Rey snapped her head up when he spoke, her mouth dropping open, but Kylo shook his head. "Your thoughts are my thoughts, Rey."
So long had he called her scavenger. There was a strange sort of familiarity to the way he said her name. Within it, there was the voice of his mother, his father and a name only General Organa spoke. A name Han Solo had used, and had almost brought his defences crashing down.
She had seen it once, when his guard had been let down and she was asleep on some nameless rock in the Outer Rim, waiting for him to find her. He would find her the next day, the sky a brilliant blue as they fought. A fitful sleep, cramped and cold in a hidden part of the Finalizer. She'd felt his confusion in her own dream. Her dream, of another day on Jakku, had melded with his, the vision of his father's arm around him, whispering it was okay while his lightsaber tumbled into the light of Starkiller Base. More than anything, she had felt, when he woke, his desire for it to be real. His fear that Snoke would discover it.
So she had taken it from him. Snatched it from his memory before Snoke had a chance to find it.
Looking up at Kylo, in the cramped quarters of this Allanar N3 freighter, Rey knew that her thoughts had flooded into his. That he knew of her gift.
Kylo frowned. He walked towards her, stopping when he loomed over her.
"Why?"
Rey swallowed thickly. "I didn't…" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I didn't want you to die."
"Not by your hand?" A quirk of a smile appeared on his lips. Her heartbeat pulsed rapidly against her ribcage.
"Not at all," she admitted.
At once, he was fallen before her on his knees. He tugged at his gloves with his teeth, dropping them on the ship floor. He pushed her legs apart, settling between them, smoothing his hands over her shins.
"Kylo, wait." She pressed a hand to his chest. His eyes sharpened from their determined gaze. Rey felt his heart beating underneath her palm. This was the consequence of their dream, the utmost consequence: she wanted him.
Easy to avoid desire when there are obstacles to be overcome, negotiations to be made. Now they were alone, and this was one truth among many. Rey looked into his dark brown eyes, heavy with the same wanting.
"Rey…" His call of her name was a low whisper. He leant forward, smoothing his palm underneath the line of her jaw, sinking his fingers into her hair. He tilted his head, as if to kiss her. She parted her lips, ready for the touch, the taste of him—he drew back, still holding onto her jaw in that gentle way, sighing.
Suddenly, his mind was open to her in a way it had never been before. There were walls put up that she couldn't knock down, and doors opened where once they had been closed. One wall crumbled, showing her how he'd slept as a child, fitfully and tearfully as the shadow whispered in his ear. The shadow disappeared when his mother cuddled him and kissed his temple, and when his father squeezed his shoulder, smiling down at him, bringing him into a tight cuddle. Hauling him onto his lap.
Through one door, she saw the Knights of Ren, at training. Beating one another until blood flowed and victory confirmed. But never quite enough. As long as he was training, Snoke would be by his side. Never quite trusted. The first seed of doubt planted, brushed away, but not uprooted.
Then another wall crumbled. Rey stood before herself in the flurry of snow, a shining beam of Light, unknowing of how powerful she was. Rey's throat grew dry. Her lightsaber, crackling red, spun between her fingers. Snoke ordered her to bring him the girl. But Light or Dark, this girl before her, scared but with power trembling through her veins, is destined for legend. Rey wanted to teach her, teach her what Skywalker had taught her—how to tap into the Force, how to embrace it, lessons she used even now, when Snoke kept her bleeding and broken.
"You grew that seed," murmured Kylo, within the cramped quarters. He gave a smile. No arrogance, no delight. No reluctance. "You made it bloom."
She thought of the flower on Jakku. If such a beautiful thing could grow in such a harsh world, she had decided, there must be hope.
Rey tucked her fingers against his chin, bringing Kylo Ren closer.
"If this is real," she said, her lips only a singular moment from his, "then kiss me."
He pressed his lips to hers.
"Rey," he sighed against her mouth.
"Ben," she whispered.
No longer Ren, no longer a scavenger. They were both reborn now; into what, that was yet to be known, but she felt something stir within the Force, within her lifeblood and his—
It resembled hope.