Pivot
By: Discord
A/N: Rey is never rescued from Starkiller Base, and Kylo Ren brings her to a remote planet to make her his dark apprentice. So far, it's not going well….
This takes place during the first sequel movie, Force Awakens. Han, Finn, and Chewbacca aren't able to reach Rey, and no lightsaber fight in the forest occurs. Bring on the AU goodness!
Most chapters will be drabbles (installments of less than 1,000 words) and hopefully updated every two weeks. Reviews are much appreciated!
Chapter One: Found You
From within his helmet's cage, Kylo Ren closed his eyes, calling to the Force around him, gathering it up like a second cloak. Its warm whispers had long ago quieted; it was cold and listless, resigned to its repurposing, and he hunted for impressions of the scavenger in his culled harvest.
She's been here, he realized, scanning the exposed planetary rock and chromed corners of Starkiller Base with a near-forgotten sense of satisfaction. The prisoner's recapture was inevitable. She was close.
The lure of Skywalker, a target for so many years, paled in comparison to finding the girl. Snoke had foreseen her awakening, but not the peril she posed.
Kylo was far wiser than his master—now, at least.
Her mention had followed him from Jakku, gaining traction and filling his subordinates with dread every time they made a report. She had stolen the sought-after BB unit, scavenged a very specific Corellian light freighter, reunited the derelict ship with its equally defunct pilot, and ferried the map to Skywalker out to Takodana. All coincidence? All luck?
The outlines of the base became background as Kylo thought back to first meeting the girl. She had been nothing but a small, shaking thing in her artless stumble among the trees of Maz Kanata's forest. Catching her on the planet's surface had been routine, one of a hundred concluded flights of First Order undesirables, and she was bafflingly unremarkable, just a bundle of panic and resolve he'd seen many times before. Only a slight flex of effort would have ended the pitiful rush of her chest.
Kylo had stolen her name from behind her fatuously expressive eyes, and it was as uninspired and forgettable as she.
Rey.
Seeping into her mind, he'd caught his first surprise. Her thoughts weren't useless, terror-mangled chaos, but rather sharp flashes of his father, so jarring they seemed purposeful—propped up to distract and disorient. Among the bombardment, he had glimpsed the Resistance's BB unit. The piece of navigation chart the droid had shown her would finally end the Jedi, and he had decided to bring her back to Starkiller Base.
But once aboard, the girl's tenacity had taken on a gritted, foreign edge. Rey had somehow been strong enough in the Force to have shoved back into Kylo's mind during his interrogation, forcibly plucking information before he could sever the connection. She had no training. No pedigree. Such a feat should have been impossible.
She needs a teacher.
Despite her lack of instruction, she had escaped her restraints. The corridor before him sharpened back into focus, and Kylo broke from his spot, stalking around a bend with strides that lengthened in anticipation. The tedium of reclaiming an already-captured prisoner would normally rouse only furious, unbridled property-damage, but this time, a hummed sort of thrill gave him control. He could feel his cloak swelling out behind him, batting caution to anyone in range, and he was eager for the girl to see its spectacle and begin her forest tremble anew.
One of Hux's troopers approached at a near-run, and Kylo stopped again, savoring the trepidation the man tried to hide beneath his gleaming armor. The girl's fear was more sublime, but this would do for now.
"Yes?" He clipped out. The voice modulator of his mask made every uttered word thick with menace and never failed to gratify.
"We've searched through the lower levels, sir." The trooper managed to sound steady and sure. "All clear."
He, like so many others, never knew the inner workings the Force imparted without permission. How it gave such insight to those deft enough to sense it. Snoke didn't know how dangerous Rey could be, but Kylo Ren was learning.
"Keep looking," he ordered. "She's just beginning to test her powers."
The man nodded and rushed off, his relief a tangible tang in the air.
A loud echo suddenly shook the ebbs around him, and Kylo turned on his heel, veering toward it. Rey was a crystalline shock in the Force, so clear and vibrant it lanced him with jealousy.
How could she possess such clarity, blazing a blinding trail, when she was nothing but a desert junk-rat? Her presence was growing brighter—it felt like she was in the next room—and Kylo sensed her movements easily now. She was down in the bowels of the base, scurrying furtively among its thermal oscillators.
What are you up to, scavenger?
Rey's hammering heart thundered in her ears as she planted another of the charges she'd stumbled upon in her progress through the Order stronghold. Somehow, she'd known exactly where the explosives had been housed, and where they'd do the most damage. The certainty was unwavering, like relayed intel at a fabled Resistance mission briefing, and she was too tired, clinging to her bleeding adrenaline, to care why.
The stormtrooper rifle she'd taken from her cell guard was heavy on her back, an unfamiliar weight making her already-taxed muscles ache. Rey's thoughts strayed to Takodana, and she wondered if her new friends had survived the Order's attack. The closest facsimile to family she'd ever experienced – were they to be ripped away already?
Focus, she admonished. Think later.
Her hands moved on automatic, activating the charge. Stepping back, she stumbled against the beveled lip of a shadowed gangplank, bathed in emergency red lighting. An image of Han Solo striding out onto it flashed in her mind, and a terrible dread rose in her, echoing murmurs of some unknown tragedy.
Shying away from the railed walkway, Rey took a deep breath, lifting her shoulders in a shoring inhale.
He's not here, she told herself. You need to concentrate.
Distant, thudding footfalls grew close and loud. Rey spun as they sounded overhead, looking up and losing her surety in an instant.
The monster had found her. Kylo Ren. He stopped on a metal-plated deck above, canting his head as he appraised her. He stared down silently before easing his neck.
"No one is coming for you," he called, making no move toward the laddered stairs at the platform's edge. "But that's nothing new, is it?" Beneath his tone's impassive calm, she heard derision. "You were abandoned on Jakku long before I brought you here."
"Shut up," Rey snapped, trying to resist the coil of anger unwinding within. "Stealing memories doesn't grant you insight. You know nothing about me." The pain of her interrogation still throbbed at her temples, and she shuddered at the horrified distress that lingered.
Kylo Ren palmed the deck's rail and vaulted over it in a billow of robes, ignoring the ladder entirely. He landed before her without any jarred impact, as if aided by invisible wires, and straightened in unhurried ease. She knew what he was thinking without seeing the face behind his mask.
She posed no threat. She was cornered prey.
Rey felt probing fingers reach into her mind, and she shook them off, staggering backward. She couldn't let him see images of the explosives. She'd blow them both away first.
"I know all there is to know," Kylo Ren said. "You're a piece of discarded Jakku-trash. A disposable pawn in the Resistance's grasping, futile schemes."
Rey clenched the detonator she'd held hidden into a throttle, lifting it slowly until it came into view.
"Then my part in the game ends now," she choked out, pressing its button.