Rey jolted up as she realized something was amiss about her surroundings; she was inside of a cramped room, stacked high with various old crates and sacks. There were no windows, and only one rotting wooden door that was adjacent to her. One overturned crate next to her had a small dish with a candle burning itself out upon it. The candle was weighing down a ragged piece of paper with a hurried handwritten message; she slowly slid the candle off of the paper and read the note. 'WE ARE NEVER COMING BACK.' She read it again and again and again, with each reading pushing her further down into agony.
'WE ARE NEVER COMING BACK.'
Her eyes immediately stung with tears. She tried to get up, but her body was too heavy for her to move. She struggled more and more, but to no avail; she looked to the small door, the only exit from the room, to see her master pressing down on her with all of his might. The Force wrapped its tendrils around her and fastened her to the bedroll, her hand trapped on the horrid note. Her tears fell and smudged the charcoal with which it was written.
"Luke, why?!" She managed to choke, her fingers curling to crush the paper beneath her hand. Skywalker opened his mouth to speak, but large billows of black smoke poured out in place of words. She squeezed her eyes shut, paralyzed with fear; when she opened them, she was curled up behind the crates in the cargo bay where she had fallen asleep. She was sweating in her oversized uniform, and tears had dried on her cheeks. She could feel Kylo Ren as though he were gazing over her shoulder, and she instinctively turned her back only to realize he wasn't genuinely there.
Why were you sleeping there, of all places? He questioned. She cursed herself. She had shown him the crates crowding her when she first woke up. Her mind raced to come up with some sort of excuse, but she was too fried from that horrible nightmare to think of anything. She knew he watched it. Did he revel in it? Was he sympathetic?
The bond was silent for a long time. He was intentionally sealing his emotions away from her, she knew it. She was too afraid to move, to accidently show him her clothes or the rest of the cargo bay she had stowed away in; she simply closed her eyes. After what felt like an eternity, he began to project what he was seeing to her. Her stomach turned and tied into a knot.
Poe Dameron stared deep into her eyes—Or Kylo's eyes, from his perspective—blood pouring from his lip and nose, eyes swelling shut and turning deep purple. She saw behind him a table with various unidentifiable instruments, some of them tainted with what she could only assume to be his blood. It seemed, however, that he had not been too seriously hurt; a mixture of relief and disgust flooded into Kylo Ren's mind as he ripped his vision away from Rey.
How could you?! She screamed through the bond as loud as the Force would allow her to. She could sense some sort of remorse coming from his side, but she was too infuriated to care. Just when I thought there was some sort of—
She was cut short by a sudden absence of Kylo Ren's presence. He had forced her out once again. She sat and fumed for a moment, gazing down at her boots as she thought of her next action. Rey went over her certainties in her mind. Of three things, she was certain; one, that she needed to find Poe at all costs. Two, that she needed to remain as calm and collected as possible. And three, she could not afford to show Kylo Ren any more than she already had.
She reasoned that Poe would not simply reveal all the Rebellion's secrets over a broken nose and bloodied lip. No, it would take much more to comb that sort of information out of him; therefore, Ren must send him back to his holding cell at some point. Her safest plan would be to discover where he was being held. Without another moment of hesitation, Rey rose from her cramped hiding place. She weaved her way back out of the crates and smoothed out her uniform as best as she could. Realizing it would look bad for her to be alone in the cargo bay of a random carrier vessel, she quickly darted up onto the deck and off the ramp.
She came out into the massive docking area of the Star Destroyer, and her heart clenched tight with fear. What appeared to be thousands of Stormtroopers stood in clean, orderly formation, waiting to board hundreds of carriers like the empty one she just dispatched from. She desperately looked for someone in the same black uniform she was cloaked in. A few walked down a pathway about a hundred feet from her, but were quickly obstructed from view by the carriers surrounding her. She sprinted out in that general direction and fell into the flow of the pathway, going unnoticed.
Rey imagined the next step would be to find some sort of terminal where she could look up Dameron's location. For right now, she longed to be anywhere where she could not see the sheer number of people under Snoke's control. She noticed the pathway leading into a much narrower hallway about four hundred feet ahead, and subconsciously locked her eyes on that destination.
As she crossed the threshold into the hallway, she noticed a technician enter a room branching off not too far ahead. She prayed one of the gray uniforms ahead of her would also turn into the room, and her prayers were answered; she followed fairly close behind, and entered a massive room full of uniformed officers overseeing hundreds of flashing monitors and holoprojectors.
Rey patrolled the room slowly, observing each monitor closely enough to see what was being displayed while also meticulously avoiding suspicion. After inspecting a few, she noticed a holoprojection of Poe Dameron's bust; to the right of his figure was a large number that she could only assume was his cell number. Two one nine three. Two one nine three. She attempted to burn it into her mind, never stopping her pace as she looped around and back out of the room.
The next stop would have to be an elevator. As she passed room after room, she noticed each room number began with one; Dameron, therefore, must have been imprisoned on the second floor. She came across an elevator after a while, and hurriedly followed the handful of officers boarding it.
"Floor number?" asked a gruff man. Rey was confused for a moment, causing him to repeat his question with a considerably larger amount of agitation.
"Two—Two, please." She stated, attempting to sound bigger than she was. He rolled his eyes and punched the corresponding button. Rey allowed herself to exhale slowly through her nose. The elevator came to her stop and she was the only 'officer' to disembark. She did not look back as she heard the door close behind her.
The room number closest to the elevator read two one one two. She assumed that the numbers would go up as she proceeded, meaning Dameron was fairly far in the other direction. She continued walking, her thick boots creating a muted echo as she walked. The hallway curved off to the left and she followed, minding her distance from other pedestrians.
As the curve evened out, she allowed herself to glance up ahead. Her throat nearly sealed off as she noticed a dark black cloak at the far end of the hallway. With whatever strength she could muster, she pressed the bond as tightly shut as she could. If she was discovered now, she would certainly die. Her eyes locked on the figure, monitoring his movements.
Kylo Ren spoke with a high-ranking officer for a few moments, long enough for her to draw close enough to hear the sound of his dark voice crackling through his helmet. He turned and began to walk in her direction, and her vision began to tunnel. She looked down at her boots as she walked, willing that if she didn't look at him, he wouldn't see her. As the sound of his footsteps drew ever closer, she couldn't help but to look up for just a moment.
He was looking at her. She couldn't see his eyes, or the look on his face, but she knew he was staring directly at her. She tore her gaze immediately back down to her feet and kept moving, her footsteps never slowing but her heart beating faster and faster.
Rey. His voice tore through her block in the bond. She didn't stop moving, but her eyes widened at the amount of strength he must have had to break the barrier. She could hear that he hadn't stopped walking, either. Don't get yourself killed.
She was dumbfounded. What? Shouldn't you be the one killing me right now? She inquired.
You're right. I should be. The bond fell cold. She could hear the elevator door slide open at the far end of the hallway right as she reached the cell where Dameron was being held. What exactly was going through his head?
She dug into the pockets of the uniform to find an identification placard she could use to scan the door open. With one swipe of the stranger's ID, the door slid open and she ran inside to find a disheveled Poe Dameron slumped over on a metal slab she was certain the Order would identify as a 'bed.' He spat blood at her feet before he looked up to realize he was being rescued.
"Rey," he exclaimed, sitting upright. "What are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you, as always," she quipped as she gave him a tight hug. "Come on, we don't have much time. I'll say we're heading for special interrogation if anyone asks." She gestured for him to follow her.
The pair faced little trouble with any of the First Order on their trek to the ship's hangar. However, there was now the concern of how exactly they would return to D'Qar's surface. Rey could not exactly consult Poe for advice given their situation, but she decided to hazard a glance at him. He nodded toward an unattended TIE fighter. It appeared as though it had been cleared for takeoff, but by some divine miracle, the pilot left it alone. Rey nodded once and led him off toward it.
Upon reaching the TIE fighter, Rey took one last glance around the hangar for any prying eyes. She slowly removed her saber from its hilt and, as quickly and quietly as possible, sliced through Dameron's cuffs. The complete lack of interference left a pit in Rey's stomach, as though something was about to go horribly wrong. She pushed the feeling down as she clambered into the cockpit of the vessel. She gestured for Poe to take the gunner seat.
Shouting began to permeate through the glass of the TIE fighter's windows. They had been spotted. Rey quickly engaged the vessel and lifted off; blaster fire began to pelt the ship's body.
"Poe, fire when ready!" she shouted through the fighter's comm system, gunning the engines to full speed as she blasted out into space. Out in the open, fire was still whizzing into their general direction, but she could quickly blend with other enemy forces. She pursued closely behind a carrier vessel along with three other TIE fighters in an attempt to blend in. Suddenly, the ship's radio blared overhead.
"Fighters, be on the lookout for a rebel commanding a TIE fighter unit. She is carrying the prisoner Poe Dameron, and is extremely dangerous. I repea—" Rey reached up and flicked off the radio power. She dipped out from the forces following the carrier vessel and aimed her pursuit for D'Qar, dodging fire from the TIEs she was recently flying with.
"Rey, this doesn't look good!" Dameron shouted as he gunned down one of the fighters. "We need to land, and we need to land now!"
"I've got it!" She spiraled between two fighters and pressed forward, the airspace between the planet and the vessel now free of obstruction. Rey put more pressure on the fighter than she had before, determined to breach the planet's atmosphere.
The entire vehicle jolted to the left as enemy fire finally connected with the right wing of the fighter. Alarms began to blast overhead as they entered the atmosphere, and Rey furiously pressed buttons and switches overhead in order to smooth out their crash landing as much as possible. The rebel base was visible from this height, and Rey in her frantic action calculated they would land within two klicks. Smoke began to obstruct her vision as the engine totally gave out. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited.
Rey, no! was all that she could hear as the ship impacted the tree level below. She was ejected from the pilot seat, shrapnel cutting up her arms as she blasted up and out into the branches above. Her parachute tangled her into the leaves. Before she could attempt to wriggle herself out of her parachute, the TIE fighter blasted off another large piece of metal that hit her directly on the head, and everything went dark.
A/N: I promise the next chapter will be a little less wordy. Thank you for reading, and thank you to those who have left a review.