At the same time, I'm both disgusted and amused with what Kylo Ren did in the previous chapter. He turns to the Dark Side of alpha male bull under the influence and I had a lot of fun writing that in (because you have to have some kind of brain damage to reason like that). But Ben Solo is there to stay. This is just a cynical interlude.
I made Mandalore look much worse than in Clone Wars. More than two decades have passed and years of vicious sectarian conflicts - it's not going to stay the same.
Also, this chapter contains a lot of mature content, so, beware.
We took you right
From your mother's home
Our temple, your tomb
Can be your pick
Not pawned
The poison is blood.
Fever Ray, The Wolf.
That uprising finally bursts open on Mandalore like a big festering wound – or orgasm - and he almost wants to kiss or fuck (or both) every single one of those Mandalorian rebels before he splits their skulls open.
Gods, the amount of sexual tension is such that the First Order could plug him into another Starkiller Base and use him as an energy source.
(And the recurring memory of her almost completely naked, wielding his saber, the plasma beam painting her magnificent body red, doesn't help his inner peace much.)
The ceremonial droid snaps him out of his hectic thoughts and out of the war preparations.
"What"? He barks at the machine.
"A message, Supreme Leader", the device exclaims dully.
"Activate it", he grunts.
The ceremonial droid places a small sheet of folded paper on his desk.
He pauses and looks at the sheet with glazed eyes. Her hand-writing, precise and rounded, too perfect for an adult and too precise for a child – he tears open the wax seal and reads it.
"Supreme Leader, (so they're on these terms now)
I was made aware that you are planning a Mandalorian expedition. My conscience prompts me to remind you that Mandalore doesn't ally with the Resistance any more. In the light of this fact, I implore you to consider our treaty still valid. Furthermore, I must again appeal on your own conscience and remind you that, since time immemorial, the strength of a true leader is proven in the extent of his mercy (oh, is it now?) and therefore, I implore you again to show mercy to Nite Owls. Remember that the fraction was sided with Empire once and that their primary goal is to secure peace and autonomy to their home planet. I am acutely aware the First Order won't allow full freedom, but a high level of autonomy is, in my humble opinion, not only quite plausible but a very desirable outcome as well.
With the hope you will consider my plea; I remain, as always, faithful to the terms of the intergalactic peace treaty.
Rey".
Marvelous – and utter bullshit – she's been communicating with the Resistance since day one. There will be no mercy – he needs this campaign.
First he crumples the paper, but then abruptly changes his mind and puts it in his inner pocket. This is the first letter she ever wrote to him – formal and annoyingly ceremonial – but still hers.
"There will be no reply", he says to the droid dryly.
The Nite Owls better not disappoint.
He gathers his most loyal officers and takes them on a mission to re-instate the Saxon vassals to Mandalore. He brings all his Chiss officers with him and promotes one of them, the one with the least pronounceable name and with most brutality, to the position of a general.
The planet is a dump. It's a desolate place torn by centuries of war: abandoned domes, barren landscapes, toxic atmosphere, venomous life forms… why would anyone (save for the Mandalorian fanatics) fight for this planet is beyond him. Or is it? He feels how fiercely his enemy loves this planet. It is the only home they know. It is their land. It is almost erotic, like man's love to his wife.
He is so full of sexual frustration it throws him immediately into frenzy and bloodthirsty euphoria.
He blames his parents for this. They would fight first, objects crashing, vases crackling, yelling at the top of their lungs… and then they would make out passionately. He heard them only once – and it was enough to realize there is a pattern there. He was a precocious child.
Only he turned the whole pattern upside down.
Nite Owls had a major fall-out with the Resistance, breaking the short-term alliance they formed. They don't understand the politics of the Resistance and they hate the decadence of the Jedi (he thinks he actually likes his enemy). Satine Trosyc is their leader; she is the adopted daughter of Bo Katan Kryze. And although they are vastly outnumbered and technologically woefully primitive, they are cunning, brutal and patriotic. They know their planet's every inch and they are a vicious guerilla. It needs a lot of effort to make them run for their lives. His own men – the First Order men, he calls them his own only automatically – have their morale crushed in matter of days.
He meets with the Saxons – they swarm around him like hyenas and self-serving snakes that they are. They try flattery on him: they rescued Hux some time ago, barely alive, on the outskirts of the Mandalore system. (He now officially hates his allies.)
He sighs and thanks them for their war efforts, which sounds exactly like he thinks it. He doesn't care to hide the disdain. Hux is weak and battered, and survives mostly thanks to his unbridled hatred for Kylo Ren – but the predicament of his situation keeps him silent.
Kylo Ren sighs some more and clenches his fists again. This time, he broke that pair of gloves. He squeezes out an order to promote Hux to the highest possible rank of the First Order: the Grand Marshal, the Governor of Mandalore.
Hux looks at him with his bloodied gaze in amazement and utter shock. Even the current of his inner hateful thoughts stops for a moment.
This was the title he coveted so much and never received from Snoke - he's so distraught after days spent in space without food and water that he forgets his permanent post will be on this damn planet.
Nite Owls attack again – he rushes to clash with them himself. (He is again thankful and realizes he likes his enemy even more.)
He is ambushed with his squadron. He looks for they leader, and sure enough, he detects her as she practically sniffs him back from across the vast abandoned dome. Two packs of wolves colliding – she flings herself against him, roaring. He remembers her from that corridor and confirms his suspicion that she is Force sensitive, although completely unaware and untrained.
He almost wants to repeat the whole: "You need a teacher" offer – Rey needs companionship – when that crazy Mandalorian bitch hits him viciously in the face with her ridiculously tough forehead.
The surrounding doubles and he tastes his own blood on his lips.
"Thank you", he openly says to her but apparently, she doesn't know the Galactic Standard.
She expected him to pass out or die – but doesn't count on the fact his pain threshold is much higher than of any other man in existence, thanks to Snoke's treatment mostly. She realizes her mistake in a split second, but it's too late to retreat – even if she wanted to.
Her blasters are no match to his saber and she is soon disarmed. The beskad she pulls against him puts his saber to a screeching hold, but it soon breaks.
You are outnumbered, he communicates to her via the universal language of the Force, unsure why he wants to keep her alive. Your men and you are doomed. Surrender and I might spare your life.
She looks from beneath him with outmost hatred. That blaze in her non-human, white-less eyes reminds him irresistibly of someone else. He understands fully why Rey liked her so much.
But then she grins with the set of apparently endless, ivory-colored pointy teeth. A loud explosion paints everything with red and grey dust.
"Why, of course", he thinks, coughing out the dust. "The bombs – I should've realized it before".
The remaining Nite Owls breaks lose – they have nothing to fight with anymore. And as his men pant and cough, barricaded in that dome, with his heightened vision he sees Satine and her remaining fighters fleeing in – X wings and outdated TIE fighters. No way Nite Owls could get hold of those without help.
He'll pretend he didn't see that. He looks around – no way anyone else noticed it.
He needs his dear enemies more than he needs his damn allies.
Their cavalry – the Saxon and the remaining squadrons – come minutes later, but the combat is already over.
Mandalore is back to Saxon. Saxon clan throws a great banquet and it lifts the spirits of his battered men immensely. They drink the bitter Mandalorian moonshine they try to pass as exquisite wine in barrels. That abomination hits fast and hits hard. He distastes alcohol his whole life, but raises his cup in the name of the big victory they waged and that he couldn't care less about. But either is he already blood-drunk or his nerves are tensed to a breaking point or the wine they serve to the troops (but not to him) is watered down - the liquor makes him almost completely deranged.
He sneaks out of the banquet hall and like an animal, tracks down that Stormtrooper that he fucked – and promoted - before. He again can't remember her name and he still doesn't care. She doesn't care either. It's all transaction.
He must be completely mad with that contaminated booze (a neurotoxin produced by fungi probably acts on him and his men and the Saxon clan) but something in him needs the comfort, needs the warmth and just raw physical presence. Her skilled oral brings the old kind of relief and then an even greater, all-consuming emptiness, now mixed with the post-combat tension.
"Come with me", he commands her to follow him to his room.
"Yes Sir".
As they enter, he offers her another cup of that Mandalorian poison and she accepts it. He gulps down another cup all at once and doesn't care anymore about the effects.
"Take it off", he growls. "All of it – and do it slowly".
"Yes Sir".
She discards her armor piece by piece until there is only black uniform underneath. Every single plate detaches with a soft click. She puts them all in one place, meticulously: good soldier.
She starts undressing herself, and it's over more quickly than he intended. She only needs to remove the reinforced synthetic shirt and pants made from the same material. She pulls a preservative from the pocket of her pants – not exactly common reserves of a Stormtrooper, as far as he is aware – and she places it inside her with a business-like, emotionally detached gesture.
"Wait", he growls again.
She halts. He observes her – lean and strong, taller than… her. More mature, breasts plump. Someone – some idiot of a peasant - would find her more attractive than that Jedi girl that tried to rein him in. Her code tattooed on the inner of her wrist. Battle-scars, old and new – there is only so much a bacta bath can do.
His eyes wander.
A symmetrical scar at the bottom of her belly – not a battle wound: a C-section. She was with child once. Where is it now? Surrendered to the First Order for Stormtrooper training.
He blocks himself from thinking further about it, but it's too late. He's now already both horny and filled with melancholy.
Perhaps it's the wine or the fact that she was in that ambush with him, but this time it feels more intimate and more compassionate. Although the previous ones weren't exactly placing high standards in that department.
"Remove it", he says and gestures to her thigh and breast bounds.
Her nipples are stiff and dark, and the place between her legs is freshly shaven.
"Touch yourself".
"Yes Sir".
That formality annoys him.
"My Lord".
"Yes My Lord", she says and sighs, her fingers circling the core of her.
But it's still unsatisfactory and before he can regain his focus, he utters: "Ben".
It's good she misheard him. Either way, no one of them knows that accursed name.
"Yes My Lord Ren", she whispers and dares to look at him with her eyes slowly losing focus.
He is exasperated – with himself, with all this madness. He grabs her abruptly and throws her on the bed, hands and knees down. That's the proper way of doing things, not letting that girl straddle him like he's some kind of sex toy to her.
But he wasn't, he knew he wasn't. Her annoying Butterfly Nebula eyes are now tattooed through all layers of his cortex. He remembers everything and it makes him want to scream. He tears his own clothes and scatters them around. He pounds against RY like possessed, like he's running away from her, like he wants to fuck that memory out of his deviant mind.
And of course he can't escape. It's even worse with that drug in his system.
Even from that hole of a room, his poisoned mind can almost see her shape forming: clad in long dress, color of fire embers, one that fails to conceal her hard nipples and the tuft of darkness between her legs. Pale strong arms embrace her from the behind and start stroking the places that belong to him: her tender girlish breasts and her sensitive nub covered with dark silk. She closes her eyes and leans backwards against her invisible lover. He roars in that hallucination and roars with pain and delight in his actual Mandalorian room. She gestures at him languidly not to do anything. This is for him.
"Prepare us", she whispers to the shadows behind her and he realizes: it's that rebellious bitch again. They kiss and they touch and he gets harder still.
She gestures at Satine to leave her, and she does. Good, he thinks, but in the next moment, he feels just a bit of all of her bloody Mandalorian teeth on his member. The sensation is sudden and her alien body temperature is probably slightly higher than an average human's (where did he pick this information from?), but she is skillful in that hallucination. All those males of Nite Owls are loyal to her with supplementary reasons.
He would still kick her right in the head, but Rey's hand intertwines with his. It is so soft, so warm – he feels her strong forearm and the dust of hair on her armpit.
"You waged a great victory", her shadow says to him, echoing her words of that morning with a new, perverted meaning. "Now you will receive your just reward, My Lord".
She straddles his face and lets him drink from her until she squirts all over his mouth. She dismounts him and dismisses that whore of her friend with a kiss, savoring his early milk from her lips.
"Now, My Lord and Emperor", she commands and undresses herself. "Tend to your Empress".
Surprisingly, he makes the woman under him come. It's a definite orgasm. He didn't intend to make it happen. It's marginal to him. But her moans reach him and he growls:
"Rey".
He hears the panting question from bellow.
"Yes My Lord Ren?"
He frowns.
"Nothing. Stay there". He comes, but not inside her. This time, do it properly. He leaves the white pearls in the rift of her strong back. She twitches, but he supposes it's not unpleasant to her.
He looks at the sight and the sight looks back at him, mocking him. He scrubs his semen off of her, disgruntled. The room is so small, to the point of the claustrophobia. Now it's steaming hot with their breathes and their bodies. The ventilation probably malfunctions, like everything else in this hell-hole of a planet. Who knows in what kind of a litter his troops sleep. No wonder Nite Owls took their first battles. This whole place is soul-crushing in itself.
"Stay there", he commands again and collapses on top of her. His head hurts where he was hit by that Mandalorian scum.
The obvious sign that the whole galaxy is coming undone is the fact there are these feral females running amok all around, claiming power, claiming what's not theirs. That's exactly the aftermath of the Old Republic: the centuries of democracy and lawlessness ruin a galaxy like that. He almost wants to thank RY… what's her number again?
His eyes wander to her wrist. 418. He needs to promote her, again. She was with him in this war campaign and she proved herself efficient and loyal.
He eventually dozes off with his head in the gap of her lower back.