AUTHOR'S NOTE: Let's go! Three in a row! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
DISCLAIM: I DO NOT OWN STAR WARS
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Chapter 12: More Than Ready
. . .
What happened last night...
Rey woke from sleep and had time to pick at breakfast, then somehow managed to make it to her station.
Did I really-...
She was given a series of tasks by a commanding officer, each one was written down on a piece of paper, to which she was grateful for.
He said he'd help me, 'control it...'
The first task had been the easiest, replacing windshields on the X-Wings had proven to be easier than stealing them.
He held my hands...
A cannon blaster's wiring needed to be reinstalled for better accuracy.
Like we were...
The rest were minor issues, programming, old wiring, a few busted tires here and there.
I'm in over my head... Way in over my head...
The day went by so quickly, Rey had hardly noticed she had an hour left in her day
"Damn..." She whispered to herself, checking the clock in the corner of the shop. "It can't be the end of the day already..."
Rey realized she hadn't thought about what the next few hours would entail, she hardly had any time at all to think after last night. Her fingers began to feel stiff from today's uneventful labor, in fact the one had been slightly singed from a snapped wire failure.
She twisted and twisted the remaining copper wires from a paneling, switching hands constantly from this tedious task. There was something gratifying about it, she knew. This wasn't as much survival anymore as it was a responsibility, it was structure and stability... For now, at least...
The wire had been wrapped in rubber film and inserted back inside the dashboard, she was certain it was something for the main control dashboard, but she wasn't sure exactly what.
This is an older TIE model, she thought to herself, carefully nudging the wires back behind the small panel door. The wire connections become loose and overheat, mix this with outdated wire insulation, you've got spontaneous combustion...
Or in this case, just a busted volume knob.
"Should be working now," She mumbled under her breath, half confident and half hoping she was right. The inside of the TIE fighter felt a little bigger with the circular latch opened, allowing the artificial light from her extension lamp to seep in and illuminate the inside. She surprised herself with how well she knew most of the tools and gadgets in the wing, it felt more natural to get up and navigate to a tool or a manual than she realized.
It became easier to work, to repair... She wondered how easily it could be to do the exact opposite.
A few loose bolts and ignition switches here and a few leaky gaslines there... I'd be doing the Resistance a favor...
Realistically, she knew better.
The entire squad of mechanics were supervised, every twist and pull they'd make, every sneeze and cough, and every slight movement out of the ordinary was constantly recorded by the higher ups. The insides of the jets granted minimal solitude, as much as one could get, but the log of serial numbers and identification pictures of the mechanics left one to assume who's in who.
And they'd shoot anyone down before they even got off the ground... Wonder if anyone else here has thought about escaping this place...
"Escape." She said to herself, more loudly than she intended. "Finn..."
It came to her how stupid she felt, how useless. Here Rey sat, fixing their little toys and radios, listening to their muffled conversations above, watching their crafts go in and out of the hangar so freely wondering to herself, 'Who's next?'
Like an obedient little worker... She thought condescendingly to herself.
Finn went through that... For nothing... He didn't even know what was happening...
Her eyes went out the window, watching the others below follow orders like the proper workers they were, day after day, nonstop... She felt a pin in her stomach pinch when she saw an officer in a cleanly cut grey uniform, his eyes were fixated on the hanging TIE fighter suspended from a hook on the ceiling.
As he approached, their eyes met and his stare became even more intense as his blue eyes sharpened, "Lady Rey, I'm here to escort you to the next phase of your routine, can we proceed?"
There's that 'Lady' again...
The very word made her gag slightly. A lady was proper and clean, beautiful nails and pristine hair and smelling of some luxury fragrance she'd never experienced yet. Rey was none of those things.
Rey stuck her head out from the capsule hatch, throwing her entire body out next and carefully sliding down the circular pod. When her feet hit the metal ladder with a PRRANG sound, she began to descend.
Her boots slammed on the floor, marking her impact and approached the officer in clad. "I know you've got a job to do, but can you just call me Rey?"
The man smiled, it was faint, but kindly, and Rey expected this much from him, "I don't take orders from sand-rats, just their keepers." He surprised her with his sarcasm, then eagerly capping off, "I'm a second ranking officer in the First Order, you're the pit-stained mechanic. I don't need eyes to see you're not a lady," His smile faded, the disheartened look on Rey's face didn't seem to falter his next words at all, he stepped back, "Just a nose."
He walked away without another word.
Rey wasn't sure if she wanted to scream or cry, she stood contemplating this for a moment, then dismissed this thought. She began to follow him instead, harboring those emotions, bottling them like she would an overflowing water pot.
If this is what it took last night to get someone out of my way, then bring it on...
Keep feeding me, you bastards, I'll chew it up and spit it back into all your faces one day.
They walked through the various hallways of the ship, Rey trailed back enough to keep her distance, but not far enough to get snapped at again by the greysuit. During this walk, Rey took note of each corner, remembering and piecing together a map inside her mind... For safe keeping, of course.
Straight out the hangar, make a right. The left will take you to lodging. Straight. Right. Keycard door, probably getting close.
The walls began to change, there were no more windows, and it began to get quieter. The commotion had stopped from far behind them, and the walk suddenly took an eerie turn for the worst. Rey assumed they had trailed off somewhere far within the insides of the ship.
They came to a large, diagonally enclosed door, it looked large enough for her cruiser, but only large enough for one. The man approached its key console, turning his body obviously as to not give Rey a chance to remember the key pin.
A short jingle later, the door had whusshed open.
The gymnasium was easily large as the hanger, maybe even a bit more in terms of speciosity. When Rey followed the officer inside, their footsteps echoed off the metal floor and impacted each wall.
Yards away, stood a small area padded from wall to floor. In the center of it all stood the brooding Kylo Ren in a less formal attire, the cape was removed, and he wore more nimble clothing than his usual drapery. Rey noticed she wasn't as fearful to see him, it made her feel a foot taller than him as she approached.
He was facing away from them, like he had nothing to say or didn't notice their approach, but Rey knew better than to assume that.
"Leave us." He seemed to demand the thin air before him, and for a moment, Rey thought he was speaking to her. She hardly felt the small brush of wind against her arm as the officer turned and left without another word to be said. "Are you ready?"
He said that in a sharper tone than Rey was expecting, and Rey appreciated the coldness all the same. "More than ready."
She was. Something began to pulse within her, from her chest, through her veins, and into the tips of her fingers and the grit in her teeth. It was steady, fierce, and Rey knew whatever it was, it's been chained for too long. "What am I gonna do?" She asked, more delightfully than Kylo Ren cared for, "Push stuff around, maybe pick up a thing or two?."
When Kylo Ren turned to her, he saw the very look in her eyes from last night, but felt the very sensation that began to bleed from her very core. It was powerful, like an animal craving flesh after its first taste of prey. She wanted more, but she wasn't ready.
"Not exactly." He spoke dubiously.
Rey hadn't noticed the saber fastened closely to his hip, if she did, she would have been prepared for the quickdraw Kylo Ren had performed. Swiping his hand across his torso, gripping his hilt and in an instant, igniting the light and swiping it to Rey's chest.
She nearly toppled over, still processing the step by step maneuver he had made to catch her off guard. It crackled before her, she had half a thought to swipe the flickering blade away with her palm, but she quickly rejected that idea. Her puffed chest deflated, and fear froze the blood in her veins once again.
"What are you doing?!" She cried through the unpleasant heat the saber began to produce.
The saber was swiped again, impacting the floor before her feet and singing the padding. Rey leaped away from the contact, checking to see if she hadn't vaulted out of her own boots, but saw the melted slash in the floor instead.
He slashed again, and again until Rey had moved entirely off the mat. Rey caught a strong smell of something burnt in the air and she wondered if her clothes had been singed, "Stop it!" She finally protested.
She was surprised when he did. The saber was hilted to his side, pointing away but still fully charged and ready for an instant amputation. It crackled and fizzed below his grip, her senses heightened at the burning rubber before her feet.
"No, you're not," He stated above the constant, electric melody that filled the training hall. "You're not ready because you don't allow yourself to be ready. The force isn't some thing you can control, it's energy... feeling... power.
Tell me what you felt last night."
His momentum had come to a halt, the grave warning that had respired from him seeped into Rey and forced her mind to recollect.
"I-... I don't know what I felt," She found the words to say, her eyes subconsciously searching the floor for answers, careful not to land them upon his saber out of sheer trepidation of a swing. "Fear... Maybe? I was scared and... Angry... I was angry."
"Why were you angry?" He pressed, obviously prodding into the subject.
"Because you scare me, that's why. You didn't need to hurt that man just to prove a point!" She retorted back, knowing her words were rushed and sounded silly, but she didn't care.
"But he hurt you." He spoke joylessly, as if he cared little for his own response.
Rey took it the other way, her visible shield began to crack upon the gleaming saber and his persistent responses. "Well-... Maybe you need to mind your own business, I can handle myself."
"Why are you protecting him?"
"I'm not protecting him," She gritted her teeth.
The saber swung diagonally again, but Rey was expecting this much. She had taken a step too far and capsized to the floor, feeling the heat blaze off the missed swing. Rey wasn't entirely sure if the swing was intentional or not, but it didn't matter. She quickly gathered her bearing, pushed herself to her feet, and the battle was even again.
"You're wasting my time," Kylo Ren growled low, another warning shot fired across them. "You said you were angry, then prove it. The force is channeled through you, your emotions make you strong, but they also make you weak... Use your fear, use your anger..."
She watched as his saber swung deftly to his side, patiently waiting for another foot to cross their boundary. Rey imagined the mirror, Finn, his lips mouthing her name with each fleeting breath...
Rey... Rey...
It was there. It was small at first, no more than a palpitation or a different irregular body function. ...Rey... It was inside her heartbeat, pulsing through every vein inside of her. ...Rey... Then it wasn't there after all, it moved in directions she could not follow throughout her body until...
...Rey...
It had returned. A guided string from her chest to her fingertips, pumping its omnipresence throughout that very piece of thread until it reached every crevice of her system. There was no more fear.
Rey had balled her hands into tight fists, her gaze now fixated on the humming saber. The weapon began to crackle and misfire intentionally, Kylo Ren's fixated gaze not upon his very own craft. His hand tightened around its grip, the other hung unsettling in the air.
A divide came between them, a power that stretched its hand out of its hibernating state, and weakly gripped the blazing lightsaber in Kylo Ren's grip. It began to pull as the saber fought off its violator with every crackle and sizzle in protest of its persistent aggressor.
The pull was vague, barely present at all as if a child was tugging at his sleeve. It was easy to fend, Kylo Ren had no trouble taking his focus from the grip at stake and shifting it to Rey. She was sweating, it had only been mere moments since he gazed upon her, and yet it was as if someone had came in those seconds and dumped a bucket of water upon her head. A vein glimmered in the beads of perspiration, and her eyes began to flutter, desperate to keep the brown orbs inside her lids at the task at hand.
He's seen this before, experienced it, felt every cell and molecule fighting with this new sensation... The feeling alone is enough to drive you mad.
"That's enough, Rey," He projected through his lightsaber's outcries, "I said, That's enough."
Rey could have been inside another room, or even on another planet. Her unresponsive state sent him into action, lightening his grip on his hilt and sheathing his saber. The break from Rey's hold and the sudden enveloping his his saber forced a malfunctioning spark into the air and sent it feet away from where he stood, but he did not notice.
When the hold had been broken, the room feel quiet in that very second. Rey's eyes had shut for good, her consciousness had subsided and her buckled knees caved underneath her small frame.
Kylo Ren had expected the sudden senselessness from her, it was a given event he knew too well. He took short strides after his hilt had been discarded, catching Rey inside his arms before her hip hit the floor. His arm flew underneath of her shoulder blades, resting on one of the hilts and guiding her to the floor gently.
Her body rested peacefully, exhausted from the momentous power it had discovered in mere seconds.
I knew you could do it... He wanted to say.
You're strong, I can feel it in you...
"Rey," He beckoned, "Can you hear me?"
Kylo Ren was uncertain if he truly wanted to wake her. While Rey was in this state, she was submissive, controllable, a statue, a work of art. It would be easy to gaze upon her like this for hours if time would allow.
While conscious, Rey was compelling, intoxicant, an incredible force of nature to which she had no idea had such an effect on him. For if she did, Kylo Ren knew it would only make her even more powerful.
"Hmmm..."
Rey's lids began to wrinkle, cracking open to inspect her surroundings. She was surprised to find nothing but black before her, and she wondered if the lights had been turned off for a moment. It was when her vision began to adjust and she felt the restriction of a long arm supporting her above the floor, she realized she was no longer on the mat.
It was clear to her she had lost all trace of the past few moments, her facial expression revealed a puzzling look, "What happened?" She said in a way that was made her seem even smaller than the given position she was in, "Did I do something?"
Kylo Ren noticed she hadn't given any thought as to how she ended up in his arms again, but he decided not to bring that up, "You fainted..." He stretched his feet underneath of Rey's body, now cradling her weakened figure similarly to another state she was previously in. "Sometimes it's better that way," He caught her attention, the glow in her bright, brown eyes shifted to the slits in his mask, as if knowing exactly which ones lead to his eyes. "You're not used to the force just yet... It's still new, but your body will learn its limits and you'll learn to use it properly... But now we know, you have potential..."
His sight was fixated, the hopeful, promising look in her eyes was a rewarding sight. He noticed the burst capillaries upon her cheeks, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah..." She said in almost a whisper, "I'm okay..."
He waited for another response, but there was nothing left to say. Kylo Ren couldn't pinpoint the exact emotion she felt, but it wasn't any cause of alarm, if anything, it was mildly comforting to unwind in the silence. In his arms, she found her strength, forcing her palms to the floor and lifting her torso out of his clutches. "Let's try again..."
Please tell me your thoughts and review as honestly as possible. No Star Wars FanFiction is perfect, unless it's written, sealed, signed, and kissed by George Lucas himself, but I hope this makes at least 1 person happy.
Thanks for reading! Come back for 'Chapter 13: Something Needs to Change.'