Kylo

Cleanup and recovery went on for days. My brothers and I worked in shifts looking through the smoldering rubble for survivors, but by the fifth day, the only thing we pulled out were bodies. Rey helped to tend to the wounded at the overcrowded hospital. Since the attack, the only time I saw her was at night when I fell into bed next to her sleeping form, but without fail, I'd wake up alone.

Ushar asked me to meet him at the townhouse, saying he had something pressing that needed my attention, so I went home, and found Rey standing in the kitchen. Her face wore a bone weary expression as she stared at a bowl rotating in the microwave. I recognized the smell of the baked ziti that Beau had made a few nights ago and my empty stomach clenched. She pulled the door open when it dinged, and reached in with her bare hand, only to spit a particularly filthy curse when she touched the bowl, and jerked her hand away.

"Are you alright?" I asked, and she gasped, nearly jumping out of her skin. She sighed when she saw me, visibly relaxing.

I held my palms up. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking." I knew better than to sneak up on her.

"It's fine." She said, her attention going to her fingers.

"Let me see." I offered, stepping closer. She turned toward me, laying her hand on my palm. The burns weren't serious, were barely even noticeable. "Does it hurt?" I asked, looking up at her. She shook her head, and I leaned down, kissing the reddened skin on her fingertips. I turned, and took the bowl out of the microwave, then walked it over to the dining room table while she pulled a clean fork out of the dish strainer.

She grabbed a bite, melted cheese stretching as she shoved it into her mouth, then made several panting exhales before she could actually chew.

I frowned. "Have you eaten today?"

"I'm eating now." She said, her mouth full.

"Yes." I agreed. "But, what else have you eaten today?"

The fork clanged on the plate as she speared another bite, and she crammed it in without answering.

"Kriffing hell, Rey." I groaned, bringing a hand up to rub my face. It scraped along the week's worth of coarse facial hair I hadn't had the time or motivation to shave.

Her brow furrowed and she argued, or maybe defensively explained, but her mouth was too full for me to actually understand what she was trying to say.

"You cannot do this." I told her. "You have to stop to eat. You have to stop to rest."

She raised an eyebrow, giving me a look that asked when I'd last stopped to eat or rest.

"I'm not seven months pregnant." I ground out, icily.

"Why the hell does everyone keep reminding me how pregnant I am?" She asked around a mouthful of ziti. "Do you think I forgot?"

I rubbed my eyes, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't have me sleeping on the couch tonight and sighed, turning back toward the kitchen. We were both exhausted and hangry and the last thing I wanted to do was fight.

I left the ziti in the fridge, but poured the last of Vic's cereal into a bowl and had just taken a bite when the shadows around me came to life to coil around Ushar as he appeared in the doorway. The hard set of his jaw, and the tense look in his eyes had anxiety knotting in my stomach, but I forced another bite of cereal down.

He blinked, his face softening as Rey walked into the kitchen, carrying her empty plate. She slowed on her way to the sink, looking at him. "Are you alright?"

He nodded tightly. "Rough day."

She frowned. "There's a lot of those going around." Her dish and fork clattered in the sink and she looked up at me. "I'm going to shower."

I nodded. "I'll be up in a bit."

She rose up on her toes to give me a swift kiss on my lips, then put both of her hands on her lower back as if it pained her. "Good night." She said as she walked past Ushar to the stairs.

"Good night." He told her, his hard gaze coming back to me as I crunched on another bite of cereal.

We stared at each other for a long moment before he took a breath. "I'll meet you on the roof." And then he was gone, his shadows reluctantly sliding back into the darkness.

I finished my bowl, turning it up to gulp the milk down before I put it in the sink next to Rey's plate, and went up stairs. Ushar leaned against the railing, cloaked in shadows and staring out at the ruined city.

"Considering your distaste for melodramatics," I said with a sigh. "What you have to tell me can't be good."

"It isn't." He confirmed. I saw the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed, his pointer finger gently tapping on a thick, cream colored envelope that sat between us on the ledge.

The sight of it, of the gold flecked into the natural fibers, and the swirls of heavy black ink that addressed it to me, not by name, but by title, had my insides twisting. I forced a breath out of my nose, fighting the heave of my stomach as it threatened to empty. My hand shook as I reached for the letter, its cool roughness against my skin sending a cringe through me. I turned it over in my hands, my blood chilling when I saw that the crest stamped into the maroon wax seal wasn't that of Arkanis.

I snapped it open, unfolding it as I read, then skipped to the bottom, to the signatures made in blood. My heart pounded, my pulse throbbing in my ears as I broke into a cold, clammy sweat. I read the letter again, then a third time, my racing mind unwilling to comprehend what it was seeing, unable to accept the sickening realization.

"Who else knows?" I asked, folding the letter and putting it back into its envelope.

"No one." Ushar said, gravely. "I brought it straight to you."

That was a small mercy, the fact that our brothers would have one last night of peaceful rest before finding out. I gave him a slight nod and he disappeared without a word, knowing I needed to be alone. I needed to sort out the mess in my head, to calm my racing thoughts, to rationally think. The ghost of my addiction haunted my every step, every breath, the need of its weighted depths calling out to me, singing to my blood.

The smell of jasmine hit me, cutting through the haze in my head and I inhaled a long breath, letting it, and the more subtle hint of vanilla, fill my nose. Though those scents typically comforted me, now they served as another reminder of my failure.

I looked behind me and my stomach fluttered at the sight of her, clean from her slower, and in a long, white nightgown. The breeze blew the fabric of her skirt against her belly and curved hips, her still damp hair dancing around her shoulders. She was so fucking beautlful. So patient and kind and stronger than I could ever hope to be. I lowered my unworthy gaze from her. "It's not safe for you here."

I felt, rather than seen, her confusion through our Bond in the Force. "What do you mean?"

I motioned toward the cream colored envelope, unable to actually voice how badly we were fucked. She opened it, and pulled the letter out to read, her frown deepening with each damning line. "What is this?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but my throat clamped down on the truth, on my damnation and defeat, and I couldn't.

She paled as she reached the end. "Kylo." She demanded, looking up at me. "What the hell is this?"

"It's a declaration of war." I managed to choke out, and my voice broke.

Her brow furrowed, her gaze going back to the bottom of the page. "But there are more names here than just Brendol."

I nodded, and pushed my fingers through my hair. "Other kings have allied with him."

She paled further, even her lips losing their color. The letter began to shake in her hand as she read it again. "The other Kings have allied to have me returned to Arkanis." She looked up at me. "That's what this is about? That's why they attacked?"

I nodded, my shoulders slumping with the heavy weight of my defeat. Guilt rattled the Bond between us, and my gaze snapped up to look at her. "Don't do that." I growled, my tone so much harsher than I'd ever taken with her.

She blinked, her eyes going a bit wide. "What?"

"Don't blame yourself." I clarified. "Absolutely none of this is your fault."

The letter crinkled as she gestured with it. "They attacked because of me!"

"They attacked because of me." I corrected, and brought a hand up to rub my eyes. "The officials tried to warn me, tried to tell me this was happening and I was too drunk and stupid to listen." I sighed, heavily. "I didn't respond to their decree, I didn't even talk with you about it. So, all of this-" I made a sweeping motion with my hand at everything around us, at the smoldering wreckage, the charred debris, and the freshly dug graves. "This is on me."

I'd been broken, split in two by Snoke, by what he did, by what he made me watch him do to my mother. The truth was, that scared little boy never healed, and I had been frantically trying to ease the pain done to him for as long as I could remember.

Rey had seen that part of me, and she'd seeped into me with her goodness and her light, filling in those broken places. Losing her had been the final blow that had my carefully sculpted facade tumbling down like a house of cards. I'd let myself spiral into my addiction so completely that when I got her back, when she needed me to do for her what she'd done for me, I couldn't. Every decision that I'd made had led us from bad, to worse.

No, she had nothing to feel guilty for. I'd failed her. I'd caused this. All the promises that I'd ever made to her were nothing but ash, and I had no one to blame but myself.

Her warm hand brushed against my jaw, cupping my cheek, and she gently turned my head so that my gaze met hers. Strength, and resolve, and so much fucking love shown in her brilliant hazel eyes that it made my chest ache. Love that I hadn't deserved the first time I saw it, and sure as fuck didn't deserve now.

"This isn't over." She said, her voice solid and sure.

"No." I agreed, miserably. "The war has just started."

She shook her head, "Not the war." Her arm went around me, pulling me to her, and she rose up on her toes in an attempt to make us more level. "This."

My chest tightened, my heart swelling so I thought it would burst. This wasn't over. Us. We weren't over. The love that I had for her, as ugly and flawed as it was, it wasn't over. And, by the mercy of the Force itself, the love Rey had for me wasn't over, either. Everything in me, every part of me that made me who I was, a king, a husband, a brother, a man, were made better by her. I could weather anything with her by my side. My addiction may have sang to my blood, but she sang to my soul.

My arms tightened around her, though not too tight with her belly between us. Despite her insistence otherwise, I was still harboring the horrific thought that holding her too tightly would crush the baby. "You are…" I trailed off, trying to find the right word. The best thing that ever happened to me? Definitely. The love of my life? Of course. More than I deserved? Indisputably. But, none of those even came close to adequately describing how I felt about her, or what she was to me. "Everything." I finished with a sigh.

Her eyes searched mine. "And you are so much more than you think you are."

My heart fluttered, and I smiled down at her, bringing my hand up to cradle her face in my palm. "If I am," I said, trailing my thumb across her bottom lip. "It's because of you."

She shivered, her pupils flaring, and I moved to rub some warmth back into her arms. "I'll request a meeting." I told her. "See if we can all come to some sort of truce."

"If you officials warned you, or tried to," She added. "This has been in the works for a while. I hope it's not too late."

I nodded. "Me, too."

Her eyes hardened. "I'm coming with you."

I knew better than to argue.