This chapter contains no spoilers for the Force Awakens. TW: Suicide mention.
Ginovae encountered the man called Kylo Ren several times following their initial meeting, and no amount of threatening, scare tactics, or physical violence would get her to speak to him. She couldn't tell if she was immobilized with fear, acting with defiance, or just being a plain idiot at this point. Several times would he enter the room in a swirl of sour, headstrong determination. Several times would he sit and wait for her to speak to him - to scream at him, to beg for mercy, to sob needlessly - anything. Several times would she stare hopelessly at the wall before her, hardly casting him a glance as if it was to make him spare her life. And several times would he leave, his anger increasing at an exponential level every time he did so.
Only one time, however, would he give Gin an ultimatum. After days of holding himself back for the sake of having something new to fixate on, Kylo would tire of the tedium, of the one-sided interrogations, of the woman's lifeless, stony face pointedly looking anywhere else in the room but at him. He hated to be avoided, to be ignored, to be made an exception. The disgruntled force-user had gotten word, at one point, that she spoke at length to her guards whenever he was not around. Needless to say, he'd put a stop to her shenanigans as soon as he'd heard the news from the gossipy people around the base.
She seemed even more avoidant of him after the stormtroopers ceased talking with her between his visits. It was fascinating, however, to watch her cheeks hollow out as the days dragged on. He'd never seen someone give up so fast, so completely. As much as he found her attitude deplorable, it interested him to know what her thought process was. Resistance members did not act as she did, traitors among the First Order did not act as she did - even other space pirates showed no resemblance to her.
Enough was enough. She was going to speak with him if she liked it or not. Picking her brain was a last resort - being the option with the most boring outcome.
He'd taken her face in his hand once again, being that it was the only real way to steal her attention. Not having any choice in the matter, Gin stared reluctantly at bottom portion of his mask, her breaths shallow and slow like those of a toddler trying to keep quiet during a game of hide-and-seek.
"This is your last chance to cooperate," Kylo announced, alerting her of the grave mistake she was making by continuing in her noncompliance, "The next time I will not be so hospitable."
Ginovae almost choked at the irony in his words. Was this really what he counted as being hospitable? Did he strap all of his guests down to chairs and dare them to deny him his wishes? It took an extreme amount of self-control not to roll her eyes at his threat, though she couldn't quite stop her gaze from flitting left to right momentarily. She grit her teeth and settled back into the stoicism that she'd so carefully crafted up to this point.
While the flames of rage brimmed at the woman's opposition, Kylo couldn't help but feel a swell of pride that he'd managed to elicit any response from the woman at all. He should've known better than to doubt himself, especially against a pathetic individual of no real stature or importance. The volatile man released her face abruptly, taking a slow, purposeful step backwards. For once, she kept facial contact with him, still hardly looking him in the eyes. He held his closed fists at his sides, his voice monotonous, "Will you speak?"
Gin's hands twitched at the man's sudden assertion of power. She'd gotten used to the invasion of personal space, she'd gotten used to his hostile words and actions, to his unrelenting, hidden gaze. This change in pace took her by surprise, and she couldn't help but act with complacence, even just for a moment. The bedraggled female thought of the past days spent aching in a restraining chair, spent being shoved around in the hallways as she was permitted to take her routine piss-breaks. She was stuck as a prisoner for reasons not ascertained to her. It was endlessly aggravating. Her bones creaked with the overwhelming desire to give in to the will of the First Order - she owed it to herself for being so strong for all this time.
She flexed her fingers absently, her lips parting for a fleeting moment. It would be over so quickly. They would take whatever information they needed from her and she would meet the sweet embrace of death without all the fuss. Ginovae looked Kylo up and down with a slow, absent motion. She started at his feet, dragging her eyes up the length of his body until she was back where she began, but this time she stared deep into the colorless sockets in his helmet, doing her best to make actual eye-contact with the man she'd spent days silently antagonizing.
He was an arrogant, tyrannous murderer. As much as she wanted to give in, she would be betraying everything she'd ever stood for.
With a long, stiff shake of the head, Gin turned down his ultimatum, and slowly looked back at the wall that had become like an old friend during her imprisonment.
And Kylo Ren wasn't sure he'd ever been as furious as he was at that moment. She'd let him truly believe, just for a moment, that he'd beaten her. It had taken much longer than necessary, but he'd beaten her. For a few tiny increments of time, he was elated to have taken care of something without using brute force or literal force. And as soon as the ego, the satisfaction, was building within him, this horrible woman snatched it away.
He hated her for making him question himself so.
Gin did her best not to flinch as Kylo took great strides towards her, his elbow cocked in a way that made her think he was going to hit her. Before she could register what was happening, his right fist hooked towards her jaw, and her eyes snapped shut instinctively. Just before he made connection, however, he opened his fist and pulled his punch, ending with his gloved hand splayed across her cheek.
She couldn't contain the visible fear anymore, her entire body quivering and her petrified, shallow breaths returning from where she'd hoped to encase them. There was a definite rage radiating from beneath his clothes, from beneath his skin. The woman was surprised the anger didn't melt through him like the lava on Mustafar. It was palpable, it was vibrant, it was terrifying. His thumb roughly stroked against the skin of her lower eyelid, pulling at the tissues so hard she worried they'd stick that way. His fingers tugged idly on her face, as if contemplating whether or not to rip her tired features clean off. She tried her best not to move or struggle against his touch, praying to all collective deities that he wouldn't really tear her flesh from her body.
His heavy, harsh breathing shook from his lungs with every great heave of his chest. Kylo sounded seconds away from having the most violent conniption he'd ever experienced - and that was saying something. She was not important, she was not relevant, she was not powerful. He could snap every bone in her body with the snap of his fingers. So why did he relent? Why didn't he knock her jaw out of place like he was aiming to do just moments ago?
Because he was going to prove to himself, to everyone, that he could exhibit self-control.
He took his hand from her cheek after giving her face another painful squeeze, and he relished momentarily in the shivering exhale that came from her small frame. The darkly-garbed man waited for her to catch her breath, his arms crossed tersely against his chest. "If you will not comply," Kylo started, moving his way around the restraining chair and towards the exit door, "Then I will be seeing you later under much different circumstances."
Before leaving the room, he cast a look behind him, though she could not tell from where she was positioned. "You will live to regret that."
And she would.
The stormtroopers released her from the chair shortly after Kylo left, leaving her to crumple uselessly against the cold flooring. They guarded her while she folded in on herself, whispering frantically against her kneecaps like a mother would to comfort her child after they awoke from a nightmare. She wished she had someone like that to comfort her, but the only thing she had to break apart the silence was the static breathing of enemy soldiers.
Two days later, Gin was dragged from the interrogation room by a duo of men, forced to walk down endless hallways till her weary legs nearly caved beneath her body. She could feel the energy seeping out from beneath her toenails with every waking moment. They treated her like an animal, throwing her miniscule portions whenever they had the time to spare. Her bones felt more prominent, though she wasn't sure if she qualified as malnourished as of yet.
She noticed her reflection in the passing panes of glass, and failed to recognize the person staring back. This place was making her into a skeleton of what she used to be. Gin swallowed gravely at her own expense, returning her gaze forward so as not to be disturbed any further.
After what felt like an eternity, they arrived to an empty, brightly-lit, square room that they promptly locked her in without so much as a pat on the back for moral support. She ground her teeth - which she'd been doing a lot recently - at her enemies' callous, though unsurprising, behavior, and leaned against a nearby wall.
And she waited.
And she waited.
And she waited.
She waited so long that her already shaky limbs could no longer support her, and she plopped down to the ground, sitting with her legs crossed. She waited so long that she began picking at the scabs on her wrist where the restraints had been rubbing. She waited so long that guards actually came to drop off food for her, as well a box of useless nuts and bolts that they commanded her to organize while she waited.
She waited so long that she'd asked for more things to sort, and then took a brief nap after completing all those meaningless chores. The buzzing of a dying lightbulb overhead made her skull begin to ache. Gin cradled her head in her hands, her feet fidgeting beneath her as she struggled against a panic attack.
It didn't help that Kylo Ren decided to make his entry while she was near-convulsing on the ground, surrounded by several tins of hardware tools that looked too neat to be the property of any mechanic on their base.
"Stand up, woman," He ordered gruffly, his hands aching with the need to shake the weakness from her body, "You knew this was coming."
A strong, glowing red shone into her vision, explosions of color coming in waves despite her eyes being closed. Gin peeked from behind her lashes in time to catch the length of a crackling, crimson lightsaber finish it's unsheathing from its metal container. For the umpteenth time in what was probably weeks, she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to breathe right again. Her body told her to get as far away from him as possible, but she was at peace with this ending. Death by sword was so much more merciful than what she'd been expecting from this grievously hateful man. She glanced upwards at him from her place on the ground, but made no comment otherwise. Her eyes slid shut once again.
The heavy footsteps of Kylo echoed against the flooring, reverberating in her aching skull like the falling of rocks into a bat's ears. She tightened against her upcoming demise, but made no move to stop him. The steps grew closer to her, the incessant whirring of his weapon grew closer as well, and she could feel the air move around him as he raised the sword to strike. The woman drew in what she was sure would be her final breath, and with the proverbial falling of the axe, Gin rolled deftly out of the way.
Kylo was entirely unsurprised to see this. He turned his head towards his opponent, who rose unsteadily onto feet that seemed ready to beneath her weight. His long legs carried him the single step it took to reach her side again, and he took another lazy swing at the female, who made a second, over-exerting dodge in a frantic attempt to avoid his strikes. She edged slowly away from him like a frightened animal, carefully avoiding any corners that she could get trapped in. And he slowly advanced on her like a predator who knew their prey had nowhere to run.
As he moved, he mocked her pathetic excuse for a desire to live, finding it almost as cowardly as her previous desire to die. "You'd been begging for death before," Kylo began, turning his saber left and right as if taking in his craftsmanship for the first time. His head angled back towards her, and he stopped in his steps. "What changed?"
Gin fumbled lamely around for the right words to say - any words that would put off laceration by deadly fire-sword. She opened and closed her mouth several times, still slowly backing away from the hideous excuse for a human being. He seemed to take her silence as a furthered attempt at being uncooperative, for he took much more meaningful steps in her direction, very nearly closing the gap again. The frazzled young woman quickened her gait to match his strides.
"Well?"
Her words spilled out from her mouth with the force of a jet engine, "You're a damn fool if you really believed I wanted to die at the hands of the likes of you." She slapped her hands up to her mouth, wishing beyond wishes that she could reach down and pull out her own vocal chords.
Kylo stopped moving completely, shocked at the female's sudden tenacity. He'd expected groveling, he'd expected babbling - but insults? She really was as stupid as he'd originally thought. The masked man laughed despite himself, a strangely hearty, though short-lived chuckle, and it seemed to scare his prisoner more than anything he'd ever done before. The tall male put away his weapon, seeing that the intimidation was no longer needed. "Perhaps it was wise that you've stayed so silent until now," He jeered, "Had you said that to me yesterday, you would be in pieces."
It wasn't exactly a comforting thought, Gin reflected, but she took his laugh as a good sign rather than the opposite. Trying not to test the waters too roughly, she asked him a hesitant question, "Can I ask why you haven't left me in pieces, then?"
His tone became more grave at the mention of his motives, partly due to the fact that he rarely let anyone question his motives. He figured she'd be dead in time anyways, so he humored her. "I'm sure you know why, woman," Kylo started, watching her brow furrow with confusion, "You and your little gang of thieves have taken something that rightfully belongs to me."
Gin swallowed thickly, an unending film of stolen goods flashing through her head as she tried to make a guess at what he was talking about. "We steal many things," She acknowledged slowly, carefully, "Can I ask what we have stolen from you?"
The question seemed to cause his anger to broil once again, because his next words were forceful, venomous, "You know what you stole from me."
She flinched at the weight in his accusation, beginning to back up towards the wall once again, if only to create more space between them. He mirrored her, reinventing the problem she was trying in vain to fix. Ginovae put up her hands defensively, tears of panic threatening to bubble up into her sinuses. She sweated anxiously as she spoke, becoming more and more nervous, and thus, more and more hasty, "Look, I don't know what we stole from you - and I can't know unless you tell me. I can't read your damn mind!"
As if her words were prophetic in some way, the next seconds had her at the wall with a massive hand around her throat, clenching tightly around her trachea like her own clothes had just days beforehand. She struggled to breath, her feet dangling off the ground as he dragged her up to meet his masked gaze more directly. Gin clawed uselessly against his hold, her nails tearing against his bandage-covered arm.
His free hand rose towards her forehead, contorting in a way that seemed more lethal than the fact that she was being physically choked to death. As if the pain she was already feeling wasn't enough, a searing stroke of pure, ceaseless agony enclosed the tissues of her brain, as if someone were trying to force it to implode on itself. Tears leaked out of her eyes almost involuntarily as he manipulated the fabric of her mind, searching for the information he needed. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sensation, her screams being cut off by the fingers around her neck.
Kylo searched relentlessly through her memories, pulling images in and out of her head in a fruitless attempt to find what he was looking for. He saw family, he saw friends, he saw love and life and death, but he didn't see what he needed. The extreme disappointment was life-ruining, at least to the woman he was currently suffocating. Despite knowing that he would find nothing, he kept searching, the gasps for air not even registering to him.
Gin's eyes began to roll into the back of her head, and she made a last-ditch effort to save herself, using the leverage of his extended arm to swing her legs up, knocking him as hard as she could in the head. They collapsed simultaneously, the male recovering much quicker from the assault as he stumbled to his feet, hand clutched to his new bruise. She wretched pathetically against the wall, her dry heaving the only real sound in the room, save for the distant cluttering of Kylo's helmet onto the ground below.
The suffering young woman took a small, frightful glance at her enraged enemy, seeing the broken, hateful expression on his long, unmasked face. It was even more unnerving than the stony covering he so often wore, because she didn't have to guess that he was angry - she could see he was angry - and angry was an understatement.
His voice came out in a hiss as he said for the second time in three days, "You will live to regret that, Ginovae."
And she would.
But in that moment, all she heard was live. And that was all that mattered.
"An army of golems is stalking, now, the heart's lands eating all reality. Producing only dust and sand, nothing ever hurts them, nothing gets under their stone skin. And when their earthen mouths will open up, just what words should come out, but, 'We wish we were dead.'" - Have a Nice Life
H'lo there everyone! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying the story. I've caught myself calling Kylo 'Kyro Len' several times now. It's becoming an accidental habit that I can't break. Thank you to Sonic Key, Littlekitty567, xAtlanta, TenTenD, TheRealTayler13, and one guest for reviewing chapter two! It really means the world to me. Let me know what you think of this one, folks! Little bit of a self-promo here, though. I have an 8tracks account, and I currently have a Kyloplaylist and a Rey playlist, with a Poe and Finn one to come. My username there is "tylersoseph". Give a listen if you're interested. Happy holidays! - Marina