"There's something, M'Lady, that we're supposed to do now."
Kylo fumbles on his words. Speaking so plainly never came well to him. He clears his throat, shuffles his feet, and tries again.
"My Lady- Rey. While I do not regret at all what we did last night, but-"
But does he? He shouldn't lie to her, certainly not now and given the circumstances of what he's about to say.
Deep breath. Collect yourself, Ren.
"My Lady Rey, now that we have-"
He spreads the fingers of both his hands and tries pressing and releasing them together in what he hopes is an illustrative fashion. No. Gods no. That just makes it so much worse, doesn't it?
"Kriff, I'm sorry. I'm ruining this aren't I? My Lady, what I'm trying to say it..." the words flow as smoothly as a Lolth-cat smeared in honey trying to roll its way across the surface of a fish pie.
Did… did he really just think that?
Gods.
This is getting worse and worse. Just force the words out and be done with it.
"M'Lady, now that we have joined, there's something we must do. I- I don't have a ring to offer you, but I will remedy that as soon as I can. Now will you please agree to marry me and put me out of this verbal suffering?"
Both Kylo's shoulders and pitch slump as he forces his way through to the end of that. That being quite possibly the worst excuse of a proposal he could have fathomed. Not that he'd ever actually fathomed proposing but… circumstances dictated…
Silence.
Okay, one more try. Knock it out this time.
"Rey," he clears his throat for the millionth time. "In the short span that I have known you, you have changed me greatly. I will forever be grateful for the gods bringing us together. Please. Say yes. Give me this and the honor of being my wife?"
That? That? That wasn't too shabby, right? Maybe a little sappy, but far and wide Kylo's best attempt all morning.
Now he just has to remember what he just said and repeat it when he's actually in front of his mermaid girl and not standing before the one mirror in his whole house trying to not lose his mind.
Lose it anymore than he already has, clearly. He bedded a mermaid last night. Or, perhaps, was bedded by one. The details of exactly how their joining had occurred are still a little shaky in Kylo's mind, just as his own hands are as he splashes water on his face and tries to settle down his oddly raging nerves.
She's not even going to understand him. He needs to say this to her regardless. Say to her that he needs to make the commitment to her or… or… or it just wouldn't be right.
Maybe she'll accept the ring? He'll have to get her a nice one, and hopefully she'll hang onto it and not shuck it away along with every single piece of clothing he's ever tried to put on her.
Not that her compulsive nudity was necessarily the worst thing that had came along with his little human-shaped bundle of trouble.
A brief memory of their night of passion flashes hot and vivid through his mind, and Kylo has to take another deep breath to steady himself. Now he understands why some of his Knights conduct themselves the way they do. While he hardly approves of the twins and how they seem to tear a pecker-shaped swath through every willing young lady on the island, Kylo perhaps can at least relate to their impulses. Joining with Rey had been- it was-
With a grunt, Kylo shoves himself away from the bathroom mirror. He was in dangerous waters over his head as it was.
And of course his girl isn't in his bed when he gets back to her, freshly prepared breakfast tray in hand.
Kylo sighs, disappointed but not even remotely surprised when he next finds their front door open a crack. He sets the food down close to the fire to keep it warm and goes back to the bedroom to straighten it up and get properly dressed. His men would be here in the late morning. Given the events that had happened yesterday, they would most likely have much to tell him. Give him an update on the preparations for their journey and what, if anything, that Taleisin had found when he'd gone to the stretch of beach with Maz's boy.
His bedroom is in a state of disaster. It really looks like two people were fighting and then doing something else in here. Especially the bed. Kylo had never gotten a clear understanding of how his bed had gotten into such disarray before they even fell upon it together. However now it looks more condemning than ever. There were stains.
Kylo clears his throat and immediately strips the bedding away and places it with the rest of his laundry he was rather behind on. Then he goes about setting the room straight, picking up each piece of discarded or- in many cases- torn clothing to be dealt with as needed.
A loud volley of whistles from outside interrupts him just as he draws back the curtains to let the morning light in. The early morning light, but his Knights were here already regardless and they were making quite a racket out there.
Kylo straightens his clothing, mindful that all his many bites and scratches are sufficiently covered up, and heads out to join his men and see what they're making such a noisy fuss over.
"And he was with the netting?"Kylo asks. "Inside of it?"
Taleisin shakes his head.
"No, but he was doing something to it. Almost as if he was deliberately placing the pile there. Then he saw us and ran into the water and disappeared. I tried to go after him but- well there was no point. He was gone."
Kylo pauses and his Knights fall steady behind him. The gruesome blood trail on the near beach had lead them deeper into the grass covered sand dunes. Or, more specifically, small, barefoot human footprints had lead them here. Then the trail had disappeared again, lost to tidal debris and the heavy morning fog.
"The man disappeared into the water," Kylo repeats.
That was the oddest part of Taleisin's already odd story of what he had found when he went with Maz's boy to where the heart had been.
"Did you have a chance to read his soul?" Aemon asks.
"I didn't have time. As soon as he saw us he fled."
Kylo grunts under his breath. Taleisin's powers were strong but very focused and, unfortunately, detection and mind reading weren't his brother's strongest skills.
"How could a man just disappear into the water like that?" Aemon asks. "Didn't you see him swimming out? Where he went?"
Taleisin shakes his head. He shifts slightly, bracing himself against the morning cold, reminding Kylo that if Rey is out here, she's only wearing his shirt. Or nothing at all.
He motions for them to continue on.
"Let's head up this way. Eventually this will lead to the main trail. There's nothing around here otherwise."
It was a lonely, desolate part of the coastline. Exactly why Kylo had first chosen it for his own home, but now there was an almost palpable sense of foreboding that clung to the air. Everything was quiet, save for the occasional rustle of fabric or clink of his Knight's armor.
That made the screaming all the more abrupt.
A man's voice. Yelling. Shouting. Terrified and incoherent but close.
Kylo doesn't have to tell his Knights what to do. He charges forward first, with Aemon close behind him and Ria and Taleisin sticking together and rounding off to the side.
He crests the closest hill and the screaming grows louder. From here he can see the road in the distance ahead but there's a wide open field of deep and tall sea sawgrass between them. The stalks are thrashing, taller than even Kylo is, and whoever is inside there screaming bloody murder is running closer.
Kylo pulls out his saber and crouches by the edge of the field, reaching out with the Force to track the movements.
And a man stumbles out, all but throwing himself free of the grass thicket. No, two men, the second is close behind the first but still trapped in the maze of nearly impassable sawgrass.
For the first one, he's both are covered in blood and his clothing is torn. He shouts when he sees Kylo and Aemon and tries to recoil, but Kylo reaches out, pinning him down with the Force.
The Force presence of the second one reveals that he's badly injured, a condition no doubt made worse by the grass he has to push his way through. Kylo is about to send Aemon hacking his way through to get to him, but then the feeling suddenly stops just as abruptly as it had began.
"Did- did something just get him? Taleisin draws his own weapon and watching the swaying wall of grass with open alarm.
Kylo has a pretty strong hunch about what's just happened, but for now he turns his attention to the intruder they have. The bloody man curses and struggles against his invisible bonds, a large knife still gripped tightly in his hand.
"Do any of you recognize him?" Kylo asks his Knights. Ria and Taleisin stay off to the side, securing the perimeter, and Aemon frowns and shakes his head.
"No," he says. "But he's definitely not a villager."
Kylo leans forward to take a closer look. The injured man is now turning a rather strange color of blue underneath the blood splattered around his face. Kylo let's his grip go enough to let him breathe and the man crumples to a shaking heap against the sand.
"Who are you?"
Kylo kneels down next to him to wrestle the knife free from his clenched fist.
"I'm- I'm not-" the words come out roughly, and the man refuses to meet his eyes. "I'm not telling you shit."
Kylo sends a pointed look to his Knights. He should have been wearing his mask for this, he is far more intimidating like that, but he hadn't left his tower expecting an interrogation.
"Alright. Do you know who we are?"
We have ways of making you talk. That's the implication Kylo sends into the man's panicked mind.
Renewed fear he had expected, but when the man finally lifts his chin to look him in the eyes he's met with pure, unrestrained hatred.
"I fucking know who you are," he spits, "and I'm telling you shit."
It's Taleisin that crouches next to him now. The second youngest night regards the man carefully before shaking his head.
"First, that's uncalled for. And you're not the man in the water, are you?"
The mysterious man who disappeared into the ocean waves. Truly strange dealings are afoot on their once-quiet island.
True to his word, the bloody man doesn't answer. Only glares defiantly back at them. All around them a quiet falls, but it's not a still quiet. The heavy reverberations of death wash over them, and a brief glance at his Knight's faces reveals they're feeling it too.
"Guess that explains what happened to your friend, eh?"
Aemon nudges them man's chin with the tip of his blade. Kylo's patience begins to wear thin, already drawn out by their guest's rude lack of any form of cooperation, and he pulls off his right glove before wrapping his palm around the man's sweaty forehead.
He doesn't bother with being especially gentle. In all likelihood they're going to have to kill this stranger very shortly rather than turn him in and leave him tot he village to decide on. Larger matters of Island security fall strictly under the Knight's jurisdiction, after all.
The first image that spills behind Kylo's closed eyes is one of carnage. A dead mermaid being hacked apart. It must have been from the night before, and this man had been there along with his ill-fated friend and several others.
I think that was the one I saw.
Taleisin says it into his leader's mind, using their connection to share in the vision and direct his attention to one of the strangers. It's a face he hasn't seen before. In fact, none of the people are familiar.
Kylo presses on, ignoring the pain filled grunts from the man he's holding down. He presses harder into the memory, trying to make out what the group of men were saying as they conducted their operation on the the dead mermaid. Only bits and pieces of conversation come through, flashing in bursts of limited comprehensibility.
-take her back-
-bit of a shame-
-just the heart then-
-if we bring another to Snoke we'll-
Kylo breaks their connection then. He stands, glaring down at the trembling man as a cold anger starts to fill him. The conversation he been eavesdropping on had begun to be overlaid with another memory. The hold of a ship. The same group of men. Rey had been there. She had been locked up in a tiny box. More of a coffin really, it was so small she couldn't stretch out her limbs or tail. They had been bringing her somewhere. For why exactly was unclear, but the ultimate goal would have been to cut out her heart just like they had to their last victim.
Kylo tightens his grip on the handle of his saber until he can hear the metal creak. Around him his Knights stay silent, wisely choosing to hold back their questions until a later time.
As Kylo ponders this man's fate- keep him for later interrogation or simply end his wretched life here and now- the tall grass parts again. Their prisoner curses, uttering a deep and low oh fuck me, as Rey emerges. She saunters out of the grassy field, barefoot, naked, and blood dripping off the edge of a curve gardening implement Kylo had noted as missing earlier.
"That psycho bitch monster a pet of yours?" their prisoner barks. "Should have just killed her when we had the chance. Nasty animal, that's what she-"
Without warning, Kylo backhands him, cutting him off before he finishes. The man crumples to a heap, spitting up blood from the wound. Aemon grabs his shoulder, yanking him back up to his hands and knees.
"Tell me about Snoke."
Kylo keeps his voice as even as he can as Rey comes to stand next to him. Her posture is tense and she pointedly is ignoring the wide-eyed stares of the other Knights as they regard her.
"I told you I ant telling you-"
Kylo backhands him again, this time much harder. So hard, in fact, that he probably broke the man's jaw or at least his nose. This time Aemon leaves him laying there, but sticks his booted foot under his torso to flip him over.
"You'd do well for yourself not to fight us so much," Taleisin says, still hanging back to the sidelines to not break their tactical formation. "You know we're going to kill you, of course, but the manner that happens is your own choosing."
Kylo stomps over and stands above the man, dragging him partially up with his fist in his hair before closing his eyes and pushing into his mind again.
Snoke. Snoke. He rakes his presence over the memories, trying to find any lead in the right direction. Unfortunately the man's current emotional state is erratic, his thoughts laced with a mix of fear and malice and pain. It's hardly the most conductive environment for a mental interrogation, but that just makes Kylo push even harder, using far more blunt technique than he normally would even for a regular prisoner.
The man cries out in pain, the sound of it echoing both in his head and in Kylo's ears. Taleisin's presence joins them, their healer not trying to soothe the process but rather to add in his own precision to the technique.
Kylo skims past the more recent memories. This man and his comrades had lured a mermaid into some sort of netted trap before killing her. That had been this morning, not night like Kylo had first thought. Before then they had done it again, this time on a different part of the island. The very place where the Knights had their hunt a few days before.
Again and again they had slaughtered the merfolk. Hunting them very deliberately to cut out their hearts and then discard the rest.
But not Rey. Kylo had gone far enough back to when they had first captured her. Something about her had been different. She had been different. They had been so afraid of her, of whatever she was. That had lead to torture and starvation to keep her weak. Weak enough that they could take her to-
to Snoke.
Snoke wasn't a person, it was a place. Or perhaps it was both.
And it wasn't something that this man knew any more of. A nameless, faceless employer. He was just a hired thug. Why he was doing this he didn't know, nor did he care. A dead mermaid was a paycheck to him, and he had been paid handsomely for his bloodshed.
Kylo severs their correction abruptly and steps back. The man collapses, nearly unconscious from the rough mental treatment.
"Sir?" Taleisin asks, steadying himself after the abrupt departure.
"Kill him. Do it quickly and be done with it. Or, better yet, I'll do it myself."
He draws out his saber again, stepping forward, but Rey beats him to it. She lunges onto the man's back, yanks his head up, and promptly severs it cleanly from his shoulders.
His Knights take a step back in shock, or at least Taleisin and Aemon do. Ria stays right where she is but withdraws her own weapon.
Rey immediately crouches, growling at her and holding the cutting tool in one hand and the severed head in the other. Below her the body still, not even twitching its death was so sudden.
"Ria, step back," Kylo orders.
"She just-"
I know. Step back. She's feeling threatened."
And she really doesn't like you, he omits.
"Hardly looks threatened to me," Aemon mutters.
Ria takes a single pace backwards then straightens, standing her ground in front of the smaller but highly predatory mermaid.
"Why can't we sense her?" Taleisin asks. "I can't feel anything at all."
He reaches out, pushing an inquisitory wave of the Force at Rey who merely cocks her head at him then rises to stand.
Rather than answer, Kylo toes at the body. He's attired in the manner of a common sailor, and a quick check of the pockets reveals nothing more than a few coins and a piece of paper. Written on it is a crudely sketched symbol.
"Any of you?" Kylo asks, holding it up for the others to see.
"It's a crest," Ria says. "Perhaps a ship symbol? Not one from either our Island or Winterton, however."
She takes a step closer to look and Rey growls in warning, earning her a rather contemptuous sneer from the much bigger Knight.
"Master Ren, is your guest going to be a problem?"
The last thing Kylo wants is to break up another altercation between the two women. He hands Ria the scrap of paper before taking Rey by the shoulders and guiding her back a step. Rey frowns up at him, a pout forming on her lips, and she takes his hand with her own before pressing it over the bite wound to her neck and squeezing her own skin as if to remind him of its existence. Then she lets go, her point apparently having been made, and stomps back to near the edge of the grass where she crosses her arms and scowls.
When Kylo turns back to his Knights the mix of bewildered and amused and irritated looks her receives tell him that that little interlude had not gone unnoticed.
"Is that a bite on her shoulder?" Taleisin asks, his voice pitched.
A beat passes before Aemon abruptly cracks up.
"Perhaps-" he tries to mask his bark of laughter as a cough, "-perhaps we should continue this inside where it's not so cold? Considering that the girl isn't wearing a stitch? Again?"
During the heat of the moment Kylo had forgotten entirely about the cold. Now, however, it was ever present. It seemed like winter was set on arriving early.
Rey wasn't shivering, though. She still held her prize and her weapon, and she shrugs away from Kylo's touch to her shoulder when he approaches.
"We'll go back," he tells the others. "Then to town. Speak to Maz about this and prepare the ship. It seems we'll need to hasten our departure from this island sooner than we'd thought."
He turns then, his Knights following behind him as Rey sprints ahead, pushing past them to race back in the way to the watchtower on her own.
Author's note:
Getting there with the plot. Getting there!
If anyone's interested, you can find me on tumblr at lost-inthesunlight or on twitter at Ava_Avdal !
Comment replies:
CL – Thanks for the vacation wishes! I had a great time! And I always like to end on a little cliffy just to keep the suspense building, lol. Thanks for commenting!
.Feathers – Oh thank you! I'm so glad you like and are sticking with this crazy, oddball AU! I know my updates are erratic but I'll try to have the next chapter up soon :). Thanks so much for commenting!