Chapter summary:

Where Rey makes it or breaks it.

Six months later…

It was so hard at first for Rey to accept that this was her fate. Kylo had kept true to his word, she was the Captive Queen of the First Order now, but it was a role she had never asked for or wanted.

And yet here she was, here they both were. Kylo so desperate for her, and she filled with bitter resentment for him. A full circle right back where they had started from.

For the first few weeks he had no choice but to keep her under lock and key. Rey had tried to escape constantly, and came damn close several time. To keep her safely by his side, Kylo had buried her deep in the prettiest prison he could make for her. She had everything she could need or want. Clothes, food, his company regardless of how unwelcome it was. Everything except for her freedom.

Gods how he had fawned over her now that she was here with him. The finest of everything, any present or favor she could possibly want was at her disposal. She had told him she couldn't be bought. Told him to leave her be, she was sick of seeing his lying face.

Rey knew that she was doing nothing but hurting him with her coldness. Hurting them both. And, as the days went on, she came to realize one all important truth: nothing she could do or say, absolutely nothing at all, would ever drive him away.

Away is exactly where she needed to go. Rey had a notion, and it was quite a half-formed notion, but if she could only escape… she could disappear. Run far enough to the furthest reaches of th galaxy and have her baby in safety and privacy.

Maybe, if he had not resorted to any methods too cruel to retrieve her, she would call to him when it was time. Let him comfort her and be with her when their child was born and then, perhaps, they would work out the three of their futures together.

But she couldn't escape like this. He had hidden her too deeply within the ship or space station or wherever it was he had taken her to. And Rey grew tired of turning him away. Tired of fighting him for the sake of fighting and not to ever accomplish anything.

By the third month Rey was starting to feel needy. A primal instinct to nest was starting to fill her, and it made it harder and harder each time she chose to send the father of her child away in a fit of silent pain.

She finally told him she wanted them to move on past this. Get back from this dark turn in their relationship and start to rebuild. But first he had to let her out.

Astonishingly, he did. He kept her watched closely always, but her cage grew bigger with each day she remained with him voluntarily.

Yes, her cage grew, and so did her body. Their child showed up to the party earlier, only a few months after it had been formed. First manifesting as a hard and firm lump that baffled her because it shouldn't ave been physically possible to form in such an odd way, and then as an overall swelling that brought new curves and needs to her.

It took nearly four months into her pregnancy before they made love again. Rey had told him that they never would, but then her own body had made a liar out of her. As she progressed and the hormones developed and changed, a desire that nearly rivaled the effects of the cave flowers had overtaken her resolve.

Every night. Sometimes every morning or in between as well. It brought them closer together, back to where they had been before his fateful betrayal on the planet that now seemed so long ago.

This closeness and her advancing condition made her more open and content. Maybe this was for the best, after all?

Content, yes, but she firmly kept him locked out of both her head and her heart... because she was still going to leave him. She had to find a way, before she was too big and useless and then it would all be too late.

Rey didn't try to hide her intentions from Kylo. He grew so desperate, trying and saying anything, and that meanly pleased her as much as it drove her to private tears.

She wanted a freedom of choice, not freedom from him. Kylo seemed so absolutely unable to separate the two.

Then, five months on now, Rey started to feel movement within her. The window of opportunity was closing, and she had to fight to keep reminding herself why she had to go from him at all.

Kylo had always been exceptionally clingy, but now he was damned near literally driving her crazy, but only in the sweetest of ways. His duties as the Supreme Leader were suffering, and now all he seemed to want to do was be with her, spend time with them both. His hands were always on her, supporting or cradling their child through her skin. Secretly, it made her stupidly happy.

He started to beg again, then. Her will to leave hadn't changed, though. To fall to his knees and hug her stomach while pleading for her to promise to stay, no matter what happens to stay.

She didn't promise. She didn't say anything.

So Kylo changed tactics. It was the dirtiest of dirty tricks.

He started to reach out to their child for support. He started regular communions with their baby, doing everything possible for it to feel his presence. He would talk to it through the Force, fill its steadily growing soul with all the attention, affection, and constant devotion that the child basked in.

Rey had stayed strong until that moment, but nothing could disarm a mother to be faster than the father doting on their child with such an open heart.

It was too much for her to take. Her willpower could only resist him for so long before- Before she gave in and accepted this. Stopped fighting and instead starting planning for a future that at one time had seemed so impossible.

And then her old Master had called to her, right then when her conviction was starting to shatter.

Rey. You need to wake up now.

Master? Master Luke? Was that him? Why now?

There she was, laying on a bed of black satin with Kylo curled around her, cradling her now heavily swollen belly even as he sleeps, when she hears her Master's voice.

It doesn't make sense. She had been hoping one day to see him again, but now his words seem more like a warning than a reassuring message.

Rey, please. Wake up.

This time it's someone else's voice that she hears. Varn, her long lost and deeply foolish relative, who to this day she still wears his talisman around her neck. She feels his unique signature rippling through her head, settling on her upper chest where his pendant hangs.

Both of them are trying to talk to her. Neither of them are pleased when she tries to shush them away before they wake her bondmate up.

Rey. Get the hell up.

Master Luke again. He pokes at her mind more insistently, mentally nudging her with that staff of his.

She tries to resist. Tries to understand what he wants and why now...

He snags her. Catches her dream and spirals her back up. Draws her mind circling and spinning until her thoughts are a dizzying whirlwind and nothing, no matter how hard she tries to hold on to the strange and perfectly vivid fantasy her psyche had concocted, can keep her from getting pulled back to a harsh reality.

Rey wakes up.

Her head may be murky from Kylo's forced sleep, but she knows exactly where she is and how long it's been. Not long at all, it would seem. She'd been able to break the sleep while she's still on the planet. The feeling of kyber hangs in the air, that green glow she's come to know so well that she can practically feel it in her bones.

And she's bound and fettered. Tied gently, but unquestionably. Well padded manacles on her arms and ankles and around her wrists is the greatest affront of all: Force suppressant cuffs. Nothing is hard enough to hurt her, or weak enough to free her.

She can feel him, and he's close but not on this parked ship with her. Outside, in the very dim stretch that she can reach with the Force, she feels him. He's doing something, scheming like he always is, and he's left her in here by herself.

She's still on the planet. That's the only good news. But now time is ticking by and with it her chance at freedom before her prophetic dream becomes a reality.

Rey shifts at her restraints. They're soft, padded, and unbreakable. Perhaps if she had the Force, but that has been taken away from her as well.

"Can you help me?" she whispers, calling out to her Master and ancestor.

They're there with her. Two elements of the Force, and while one is more familiar than the other, it's Varn who comes to her first.

The crystal around her neck begins to glow, filling the dimly lit space that she's in with flickering green facets.

She's not truly alone. She can do this.

A new determination is sharpening itself in her mind, breaking through the last of the brain fog. Rey gets the feeling she hasn't been under for very long. Force sleeps usually last for several hours, but the heaviness of her limbs and slowness of her mental responses tell her that while her vision may have spanned the time of months, in reality it's been at most an hour since Kylo swept her under with the Force.

Rey sucks in a deep breath and begins pulling at the well of power deep inside her. The cuffs attempt to block her, but she can slip around their walls if she tries hard enough. She has to be careful. Has to be secretive. Kylo can't know about this until she's free and ready to face him.

Face him how? Well… Details are pending. Pending really karking soon.

"Help me," she implores, calling the ghosts of the Force to her again.

Make him pay for this, Rey. Give him hell.

She smiles, grinning even as a fresh line of tears streaks down her face. That has to be Master Luke. She can't see him but she can feel and hear him.

Or maybe it's all in her head, but either way she'll take it. Pretend guidance is absolutely as good as the real thing if she believes in it enough.

"Oh I will, Master. I promise. Not a day will go by when I don't remind him of this."

Amusement. Tired hands clasp at the tops of hers.

The Force cuffs clatter to the ground, bringing with it a wash of fresh energy rolling through her.

For a second Rey can feel many things. Kylo in the near distance, nervous and yet seeking something. Ah, the Kyber beneath the ground. Wherever on the planet they are now has a vein of it near the surface. That's why he has stayed here, to excavate it like in his plan from before.

She can feel more than him, too. That sensation of other life and sentience. Human soldiers, Stormtroopers most likely, and at least a dozen of them. Two of which are stationed right outside the doors to her cell.

And the tigers. Last but certainly not least are those nasty fleaball banes of her existence here. There's a large pack of them, perhaps a dozen or even more as well, and they're circling around in the periphery of the landing site. They're pissed off. They were born pissed off, as Rey has come to assume, but now they're extraordinarily angry that so many interlopers have arrived into their territory. They're not attacking yet though; all are waiting for the lurking Great King to make his first move.

Well, this place sure is inhospitable, isn't it? But now that Rey has the Force returned to her, it's time for her to be a woman of action.

Taking off the rest of her shackles is easy. Child's play. She slips out of them silently, her next moves already playing out in her head.

Kylo really hadn't secured her cell well. Almost as if this was just some room he'd placed her unconscious body in and then hastily barred as quickly as he could. How long did he think she would be out for? Obviously much longer, or they wouldn't still be here planetside.

The door opens with a strategic and refined pulse of energy. The two stormtrooper guards barely have time to see her coming before she seizes them with the Force and slams them head to head against each other.

They were unarmed save for a single stun baton. Rey frowns at the low power level of it. Kylo must have learned his lesson not to have her guards be given weapons in case she… well, in case she did exactly this.

The ship is a small sized vessel, probably an Upsilon-class command shuttle similar in capacity to the Millennium Falcon. By Rey's estimations there wouldn't have been space for more than, at the absolute most, twenty occupants.

So that's how many she would have to go against if she stays and fights them off. Not good odds, especially since she's effectively unarmed except for the nearly drained stunner. Any notion she might have had of slipping away and disappearing into the jungle has been rendered impossible with the lack of a proper weapon and the heavy, lurking feline presence surrounding them on all sides.

Which brings Rey to her other final option: she can simply fly off. There are troops outside, though most of the life signatures are located somewhere below her, confirming Rey's suspicion that they're doing a quick down and dirty kyber mining right now.

It gives her both time and opportunity. She could close the bay doors and fly off before they stop her. She would have her freedom.

But she wouldn't have Kylo.

Rey sighs and rocks back on her heels, struggling with the weighty decision. Her eyes fall to the long distance radar. It's showing Kylo's own ship out there in the space above the planet. Of course, that's how Kylo knew it was the First order that had come. The Millennium Falcon was designed not to be tracked, Kylo's vessel as the pompous Supreme Leader was designed to be more easily secured in case of crisis.

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Asshole extraordinaire. Father of her child.

Maybe it's stupid and sentimental and a distinctly female weakness, but Rey needs to see him one more time before she runs away, baby in her belly and First Order hot on her tails. She needs to see him in the flesh and look at his face once more before they are enemies again.

"What is the right thing to do?" she asks to no one.

Master Luke and Varn don't answer. She doesn't feel them anymore, but that doesn't mean they are there, watching and waiting for her to make her decision.

This is all on her, now. Finally a choice that is completely her own.

…

Well… alright then...

Rey turns around, leaving the cockpit.

Her eyes fall to him first before anything else.

Kylo towers above the rest of them, a commanding figure swathed in black. He's wearing his cloak and gloves again, Rey notes, and the heavy coating of dust and grime on them barely showed under the bright moonlight.

Truly he's in his element. The Supreme Leader, clad in black, surrounded by darkness. How perfectly fitting for a man who has betrayed her trust so badly.

She was right about her estimates, there are fourteen stormtroopers that she can read, and most of them are hacking away at a deep pit they've dug into the ground. Kyber radiates from only a little below, meaning that her time to make the decisions has nearly come to an end.

Another man, a rather uptight looking redhead in impeccably dressed military attire, paces the perimeter of the pit. He points at certain areas and barks order but seems far from inclined to get his hands dirty and do something to actually speed up the process.

Kylo stays silent. Foreboding. His face is set into a hard line of authority. Every bit of him looks like a true prince of darkness here, but now Rey knows its all an act. She's seen his soul. Felt the light of him within her heart just a clearly as she's known his gentle touch to her body.

He doesn't want this. He doesn't want to be Supreme Leader. But he chooses this path because he feels he has no other choice. That's where he's wrong completely.

Rey could leave now. She's had her poignant last look, memorized every nuance of his face and mask into her mind.

But she won't. What they've had, what they've created is something worth fighting for.

It hurts. What Kylo did to her hurts.

She had trusted him. He had betrayed her. But she had also meant what she had told him and at least one of them needs to keep their promises.

Rey had been right all along. Kylo was a monster. What else would shackle the mother of his child? What else would make her fall for him and fall hard, only to turn it all into a lie?

Except…

As much as she wants to well and truly hate him and be done with it, Rey can't. Because there had been truth in his eyes last night when they were making that pact with to each other. When she had told him she would stay by his side and he had sworn to cherish her in return.

Their baby was conceived out of love. Absolutely unplanned, but loved.

Yes, Kylo may be a monster, but he's also a man. A man who acted thoughtlessly without a single consideration for her feelings because he had just become a father and she was already starting to push him away.

A man who would do anything for her, in his own shortsighted way.

How could she leave that?

It's simple. She won't.

But she needs to get him away from the others. Separate him and then make her final, last-ditch play for Ben Solo to come back from the ashes.

A moment like this certainly calls for a Grand Gesture, doesn't it?

And Rey can't think of anything grander than nature's perfect killing machines breaking up the show.

This is a terribly stupid idea. Let the record show. It's risky, but it's also so crazy it just might work. Those are the best kind of ideas, aren't they? The ones that could as much get everyone killed as they could be the instrument of her freedom.

Rey takes a steadying breath and wraps her palm around her necklace. Varn's energy begins to glow, and she tries to hide the light of it as best as she can. Don't want to give the game away too soon.

Her mind fans out, spiraling through the air past the landing site. Beyond, but she doesn't have to go too far. There they are, those angry beasts of hell and the proud Lord.

Perfect. This is going to be one hell of a mess.

She targets him, the Tiger King, and taunts him. Come and get us, fleabags, we're made of meat.

His attention pricks. She's reaching him.

Rey pushes harder, turns the green energy into a beacon. Here there be humans, she tells him. Come on kitty cats, get yourselves some tasty, juicy humans. If you dare.

The King roars to life, his infuriated cry echoing through the jungle. Kylo looks up then from his brooding reverie and several of the stormtroopers freeze in their tracks until the redheaded man yells at them to continue.

They're coming. Oh they're coming. They're not hesitating at all, and only Rey and Kylo know the true depths of the dangers about to arrive.

Of course, if the kitties can hear her call to them through the Force, so can a certain someone else.

A pulse of shock comes from her bondmate as he senses not only is she very much awake, but what she's trying to bring crashing down upon them.

Rey.

He looks at her then, their eyes meeting from her place on the only ship's landing bay.

He thinks she's going to leave him. Abandon him and leave him to his fate here on the planet. Stupid boy, he's hers now. She's not letting him go, but he doesn't need to know that quite yet. Make him suffer and give him hell for being such a selfish, shortsighted, and foolish man.

Shock and sudden fear take over as he watches her take a step back. He even tries to hold her in place with an extended arm and grasp of the Force. Pathetic. Now that she's fully aware of his intentions, it's easy to throw his influence on her off.

He steps closer, still hundreds of paces away. Plenty of time for her to bolt and run to the cockpit. She stands her ground, staring right back. All around them the troops begin to stir, worry and concern radiating through them as a great cacophony starts to rise from the dark nighttime jungle around them. None of them pay any attention to the moment happening between her and Kylo. This great, silent battle of wills taking place between mother and father and child.

Kylo's force signature washes over her, his energy imploring her to reconsider. She has nothing to reconsider, but her resolve is strengthened all the more when his focus settles on her belly. Already so protective and obsessed with it. He's going to be an intolerably devoted father, isn't he?

And then they come, the tigers all but fly into the clearing, literally crashing their party.

There are so many of them that Rey can't even count, or maybe it's because they move so damned fast. Every feral body is a blur of white and black, blending in with the darkness and streaks of moonlight as they surge forward in a wave of teeth and claws.

Chaos erupts immediately. The shocked stormtroopers scramble out of the mining pit, blindly following the shouted commands of the General to get into formation and the order from their Supreme Leader to ready their weapons.

The cats have a new strategy this time, and it's a deadly one. Instead of holding back and striking with precision, each cat taking its turn at playing with its food like they had before, they all move in at once. The stormtroopers hadn't sufficient time to prepare, and it costs their outer ranks brutally.

Bodies go flying, literally tossed into the air, as the cats tear a swath into the center of the battleground. Immediate bedlam and destruction, and Rey feels almost nauseated by the waves of confusion and terror she feels emanating from the soldiers as they begin to be teared down.

The troops regroup quickly, however, those of them that weren't immediately cut in the first wave of the assault. They take up arms and then the battle begins in full. Teeth and claws meet blasters bolts and Kylo's precise commands. The tigers may be ferocious in every sense of the word, but now that they are mortal and can be wounded their numbers begin to thin, beastly bodies falling to the ground but taking more white armored men along with them.

Rey sees it all from her perch, watching from the edge of the clearing at the bay to the ship. She grips her only weapon, the stun baton, tightly. She misses the security of holding her lightsaber. Gods how she wishes she'd had that now as everything starts to come to a head.

Through it all she can see Kylo racing in and out of all the chaos, channeling the Force to pick up debris or, in certain rather horrific cases, the dead bodies of the fallen, and send them slamming into an overgrown kitty cat and knocking it back.

Rey waits, breathless and tight with nerves, for her moment to strike. When he comes close enough, she's going to knock him out. Use the stunner on him and then somehow maneuverer him back into the ship. Take her prize and get the hell out of here.

Good plan? No, a terrible one, but also her only plan.

But she had forgotten about one key element, one key player who very much refuses to be ignored any longer. The Tiger King leaps in front of her, his back arched and teeth bared. A living embodiment of pure rage.

He surges forward, focusing only on disemboweling her. This time the tiger's not playing around. If she'd thought it was vicious before, it's nothing like it is now. Pure rage emanates from it, its utter hatred of her and all her kind only growing more and more as she readies herself for this fight.

The Varn Stone. That's what it wants. What it's always wanted. She should have never taunted him with it.

Rey waits until the last possible moment to dodge to the side, striking at its hindquarters with the edge of the stun baton. It's a heavy weapon in its own right even when not used for its proper function, and that makes it too slow to used as much more than a cumbersome club.

The King roars, whipping around and slashing at her. It's claws come within millimeters of Rey's neck as she leaps back, pushing herself to safety with the Force.

He dives again, wanting her dead. She wants him dead. A battle to the end, even as all the chaos and kitties and stormtroopers form a backdrop of carnage to their one on one battle.

Again he strikes, and again she leaps out of the way. This time she slams the side of the baton into it's back paw, causing it to yelp out in sudden pain. The bratty King isn't used to being hurt and not getting its way, apparently, and just who does that remind her of?

Who indeed, because she can feel Kylo again. He turns his attention to her, and she can sense him giving up whatever fight he had been engaged with to come to her aid.

Normally, his assumption that she can't take care of herself would be highly infuriating. This time though, Rey needs every bit of help she can get.

The tiger spins around, slashing through the air almost blindly with its rage. Rey shoves at it with the Force, her only real weapon that she has in such a fight. She rolls away from its next attack, this time a low and lighting fast swipe intended to knock her feet out from under her.

Claws scratch at her back, drawing her blood but her fast instincts have saved her from what would have been a devastating wound. Behind her another tiger gives a death cry that echoes hauntingly against the metal of the ship as the creature meets its end at the hands of Kylo and a Force choke. The Tiger King howls in rage, every one of its fallen comrades seeming to make it impossibly angrier.

The field is now laden with dead tigers and dead stormtroopers. Rey is thankful for the darkness of the night shielding her from must be a truly ghastly sight.

All the deaths seem to turn the King practically berserk. It races forward, howling and clawing in a frenzy of limbs. Rey gathers the Force, trying to blanket it around her in a protective shroud. The beast plows straight through it, colliding head first into her abdomen and knocking her off her feet.

She slams hard against the ship, all the air being knocked clear out of her lungs until she can't even scream as the Tiger King rears up, drawing its claws back and moving in for the kill.

Rey stabs the baton forward, hoping that the electrical blast will be enough. And, just like he had with her lightsaber, he bites it. Chomps down and forcibly tears the weapon out of her grasp and tosses it aside before she can activate it and shock him.

Not a second is wasted before he strikes again, and another push of the Force is the only thing that saves her from immediate death. She cries out when his weight crashes against her, pinning her to the ground as Kylo appears. Her bondmate does a flying leap through the air, crashing his own weight down onto the beast's right shoulder and shoving him off of her long enough for Rey to scramble away and back to her feet.

She's bleeding. The King had clawed at her, and so is Kylo. Both of them are streaked with the battle scars of this fight, but their main enemy licks its lips as it circles them. Gods how Rey hates this vicious beast. She's not going to be its damn meal tonight, neither of them will be.

"Focus Rey, you're panicking."

Kylo's hand grips her own. His gloves are slick with tiger blood.

"And you're not?"

She squeezes him back tightly, both of them turning to face the Tiger King as it prowls, back low and ears flat against its head. Waiting to strike. Waiting for a break in their defenses.

Then it growls, a horrid bone chilling sound as it hunches down, tail lashing from side to side. Any moment now it's going to attack them.

"Kylo..."

Her voice breaks, fear and growing pain from her wounds starting to overwhelm her.

"We can take him, Rey. Focus."

"We have no weapons."

Kylo reaches out, summoning the stun baton back to them. He shoves it at Rey, his eyes never leaving the great beast. Rey glances at it, identifying the problem immediately.

"This only has one charge," she tells him.

His hand tightens then he lets go. Rey can feel him channeling the Force into them, merging their two abilities together so they can fight as one. The Tiger King must be able to feel it too, his fur rising to form a stiff ridge as it senses their power. That power that it seems to hate so very much.

"Then make that one charge count."

All around them the fight continues. Howling and growling and shouting and shooting. Rey pays it no attention. This is just them now, and she's going to end this.

"Come on furball, let's do this."

For good measure, she palms the Varn Stone and lets the energy flare up. The Tiger King does not disappoint. It charges headfirst, throwing its full weight as it crashes into them.

Together Kylo and Rey try to slam the Force back to meet it. Try to literally crush it with the strength of their shared powers.

The Force slows it, but it doesn't stop it. The beast strikes, hitting Kylo with all its might and they both collapse to the ground in a flurry of wrestling limbs and black and white.

Rey slams the baton across the King's head as hard as she can and presses the trigger. The tiger shakes, trembling as electricity crackles over it.

Except the stunner was only meant to subdue, not kill, a human. The best it does to the King is buy them a second to react. Kylo shoves at it, and the tiger shoves right back, snapping its teeth at his neck and barely missing as Kylo fights to hold him off.

He's going to kill him. Rey can see it before it happens, the shock of it turning everything into slow motion. Kylo is losing the battle with their enemy, every wound and every weakness building and breaking his concentration with the Force.

Then the solution dawns on her, breaking through the fear of her mind like a beam of light. She knows what she has to do. It was so obvious this whole time.

Her lightsaber.

It's still in there. She can feel it. Her kriffing lightsaber is still lodged in the great cat's stomach.

Rey doesn't think twice, but she still closes her eyes as she reaches out.

Guided by the Force alone, she finds what she was looking for: the switch. Rey activates her saber from within the animal.

The beast howls like never before as the energy pierces through its innards and out the other side. It's a horrible sound, but what she started Kylo finishes. Despite being pinned under the King and literally seconds from a swift death, Kylo harnesses the Force with perfect skill. He commands Rey's saber into his own hand, severing the tiger in half in a monstrous shower of nastiness far too gross for Rey to be able to describe.

A thunk follows and the ground shakes. Rey squeezes her eyes together tighter, the King's blood splashing against her face as the creature collapses lifelessly to the ground.

And then there's silence. Just the sound of Rey's own gasping, shaking breaths.

"Rey," Kylo's strong hands grip her shoulders, shaking her gently. "It's over. You can open you eyes. It's finally over."

When she forces herself to look, Kylo is slick with red. All the blood and… bits of things shine like black ink on his clothes in the moonlight. Her saber is still in his hand, and he deactivates it, snapping it to his belt when she numbly reaches to take it back from him.

"This is mine now, Rey. I'm keeping this. You owe me a debt and now I've collected."

She exhales shakily, her hand still gripping the stun baton that she'd been holding onto for dear life throughout this whole fight.

Rey can't bring herself to look down at their defeated opponent, but Kylo does. He frowns, shaking his head in distaste at the messy scene.

"Well that's excessive and unnecessary."

Oh. No. Definitely not going to look.

Instead, Rey turns out of his grasp, getting some distance between her and her bondmate. The battle between the stormtroopers, those few that remain standing, at the other tigers has come to an end. With the King fallen, the rest of the beasts take off, fleeing into the night and leaving a scene of destruction and death behind in their wake.

The battlefield falls still again.

Kylo watches Rey. She looks anywhere but at him.

After a few moments, the redheaded General approaches from the sidelines, looking only slightly rumpled despite the brutal fight that had taken place.

"Ren, what in the gods has happened to you?" he snaps, staying well back from his tiger blood and guts covered Supreme Leader.

Kylo pays him no attention. His eyes are on Rey and Rey alone.

Right. Of course. The battle with the tigers may be done, but hers with her kidnapper has only just begun.

"Rey."

And out goes the hand, offering itself to her to take. As if it was that easy.

"Kylo, you know what my answer will be."

He steps closer and Rey takes another step back, nearly tripping over the pile of dead king kitty.

"Rey, I will not force you to come with me." He swallows, then corrects himself. "I mean… I will, okay? But I don't want to."

Rey shakes her head at him. Is this the way it will always be between them? This constant spinning in a circle, both of them trying to pull each other into the duty-driven orbit?

Kylo tries again, continuing to close the distance between them until he has Rey cornered.

"Please Rey, come with me. Of your own free will. Be mine. I love you."

Rey is stunned into temporary speechlessness. He just came right out and said that. In front of everyone.

The uptight General starts to scoff, choking back his clear contempt for his Supreme Leader's declaration.

"Ren, what the bloody well do you think you're doing? This Scavenger scum is nothing but a filthy garbage pi-"

-cker. That was the missing syllable, but he never utters it because Kylo flips his hand, sending him flying against the side of the ship with a wave of the Force. The General crumples into an unconscious heap and the remaining Stormtroopers shift uncomfortably, clearly unsure what their protocol of duty is in these circumstances.

"Did you- isn't he someone important? Shouldn't you not have done that?"

Kylo shrugs, clearly already having move past the interruption.

"He's just my second in command. He wants to kill me and take my place. Think nothing of him."

"Kylo-"

"Rey, it's just us here. You and me. No one else to judge or sway us. Let's make this choice together. Come with me."

Rey's eyes dart from his pleading faced to the masked heads of the Stormtroopers gathering around the unconscious General behind them.

"What about them?" she asks. "They're here."

"Them? They're nothing. Ignore them."

He has such a way with words, doesn't he?

"Nothing? Nothing like I am, you mean?"

Among many things, that's another one that Rey will make sure he pays for forever. Kylo swallows and takes another step closer.

"They're really nothing, Rey. They're pathetic. Useless. Ignore them."

Behind him, one of the Stormtroopers hangs his head in shame.

"And if I say no?" she asks, her hand tightening on the handle of the depleted stun baton in case she has to hit him upside the head with it and make a getaway.

"Don't. Say yes."

Kriff he's singular. Rey has to spell it out for him, that's the only way he'll understand.

"No, Kylo. I'm not going back to the First Order with you. I refuse to."

The hurt and desperation rise in Kylo's eyes. He shakes his head mutely, stubbornly refusing to let Rey's words sink in to his incredibly dense skull.

"Rey-"

"You lied to me, Kylo. You knew the ship was coming for us, and you fogged my mind and hide them from me until it was too late."

Kylo steps closer then and this time Rey stands her ground. Because she has to, since she's already been backed up flush with the wing of the ship.

"Wrong. I hid us from them, Rey. I was going to stay here, they never would have had to know. And then..."

And then she'd become pregnant, and that had changed everything.

Everything more than Kylo even knows.

"You lied, Kylo. You lied to me."

His eyebrows pull together, and he nods softly.

"Yes, Rey, I did, but I did it for you. I did it all for you."

His hand strokes her face. It puts him in the perfect position to sink her into another Force sleep, she notes.

Rey sighs, pulling herself free.

"Kylo… I forgive you."

She smiles up at him, watching the confusion flash across his face as she repeats herself.

"I forgive you, Kylo, but only this one time. Because I lied too. This stun baton didn't have just one charge, it has two."

And she steps back, plants the end of the weapon square in his chest, and pulls the trigger.

Unlike the tiger, Kylo goes down in an instant. He collapses into a twitching heap, all the electricity making his hair stand on end.

Murmurs of shock rise from the three remaining stormtroopers. Rey can feel their eyes on her, the indecision echoing throughout their minds. She summons her lightsaber back into her palm and this time no jungle beastie rises out of the depths to take it from her.

"Pick him up," she orders, pointing at Kylo's unmoving shape. "Carry him into the ship and take him into the back room."

The stormtroopers look at her, then the General, then Kylo, then at each other. Rey rolls her eyes, waiting for them to either fight her or obey her.

"Is he dead?" one of them asks. There's a touch of hopefulness to his artificially augmented voice.

Oh, Kylo will be fine. He'll wake up with a headache and a bruised ego. But these troops certainly don't need to know that, especially when the other option is to carry his massive bulk into the ship on her own.

"Yes, absolutely dead. I'm your new Supreme Leader, so, like, you have to obey me."

Supreme Leader Rey? That's… so messed up. Profoundly. She's going to shuck that title as soon as she hits atmo.

The troops still hesitate. Rey feels her annoyance rise. Maybe Kylo was right about them after all.

She clears her throat, igniting her lightsaber and gesturing from them to Kylo.

"Are you disobeying your Leader?" she barks, channeling her inner angry man-child.

Now that gets their attention. They immediately snap back to perfect posture, scuttling over to Kylo and picking him up. One of them even salutes her as they haul him into the ship.

And in less than five minutes, the three bucketheads and their two unconscious guard companions are back on the ground and Rey is in the air.

Nine nights. That's how long it has been since they crash landed on this planet. It seems like a lifetime ago that she was up there on the Millennium Falcon, wondering what the hell the 'incoming ship' that her scanners had detected was doing.

There's something slightly melancholic about leaving here, but once again fate played its hand and she and Kylo were simply swept along for the ride.

With a deep sigh, Rey settles down into the captain's chair of the Upsilon-class and starts plotting out a route back home.

Author's note:

next chapter: Epilogue of things to come…