3. Chapter 3
The fantasy is wild, she can all but feel hands on her skin and for a very long time it doesn’t really seem to matter if they’re hers or not. Perhaps she should be more concerned, but there’s no room in her head except for the need for more. More contact. More relief. Then it ends and Rey feels strange, almost empty.
The empty, itchy feel builds through the day. It feels like a turning point, as though last night morphed this, whatever it is, from a mental tug of war to a gyroscopic spin. Master Luke had suggested taking today to meditate and reflect, but what was so simple yesterday is nigh on impossible now.
She cannot stack the pebbles.
The quiet point of balance is elusive.
It might have been nice, she reflects with just a trace of bitterness, if her teacher had provided just a little more helpful instruction before taking leave. But when had nicety or convenience ever been her lot? She hadn’t been trained in salvage, in fighting, in survival. She could do this. She would do this.
By the third morning Rey understands why animals bite through their own limbs to escape traps. She’s ready to claw her own skin off if it will only stop this terrible off balance sensation. She’s given up on trying to find relief, release from the dreams, the moments of heightened arousal, wild oscillations between wrath and shame. Meditation only makes it worse, she thinks, spreads her open and vulnerable instead of building her defenses, as Master Luke had suggested.
He still has not returned from wherever he disappeared to.
She shies from reaching into the Force to find him, to do anything that might bring her closer to this terrible overwhelming thing that is happening.
Kylo Ren has been silent since that single brief exchange in the middle of the night. She wonders if she dreamed it, invented it out of thin air. Then again, she has tried to stay away from anything that would bring her closer into contact with him. He is behind this thing. She knows it with the same certainty that she knows her name. That’s not the same thing as knowing what to do about any of it.
Denial is manageable, she’s used to that at least, and while it is misery of its own kind at least it is her own self-imposed misery and something familiar, something she understands while everything else slips under her feet like quick sand.
By the third evening even the denial cannot stop the crawl of claustrophobia on her skin. The sun sets and she is still alone. Enough is enough. Master Luke has never forbidden her anything, certainly not brief ventures off planet; he seems to understand her loathing of being trapped in one place. Chewie has the Falcon, it would be criminal to leave a ship of that majesty in this world of rust and salty air, but there is a rough and ancient shuttle hidden under an overhang just above the tide lines, and the engine starts at her touch.
Space soothes the relentless drive as Rey leaves the blue and green surface behind, planet shrinking as she breaks atmo. It’s not gone, no, she can still feel it lurking in the space behind her eyes, but less overwhelmingly intrusive now. With enough room in her head to think, Rey considers the practical considerations of this trip, namely her destination. The trade world that is her usual stop when running errands is instantly unappealing: too crowded. The next option, running down the very short list of places that she’s visited and would like to visit again is D’Qar and the resistance base. She hasn’t spoken to Finn in the month since she left to seek out Luke and begin her training, it might be nice to see him again and swap stories about their time apart. The Resistance base will be crowded too, but the vast surface jungles are a pleasant enough escape when the bunker becomes stifling and it’s not like she’s planning to stay there very long.
Rey’s setting the controls for her jump to hyperspace when the communications channel crackles with a distress call. She freezes, but it’s no real choice in the end. The message ispre-recorded, a nearly universal call of distress, repeating infinitely into the endless void of space:
This is Captain Wex T-670 of the Zygo Corporation. Stop. Space pirates raided our vessel and crippled our engines. Stop. Have life support in rearmost quad only. Stop. Any assistance rendered will be recompensed by Zygo Corp. Stop. Situation dire. Stop. Please respond if you read us. End Message.
Rey grimaces. Thieves are the worst, especially in deep space. Especially if they target engines. There are some things you just don’t do to your fellow sentient beings. It’s not hard to trace the signal to a floating freighter, and she grimaces at the read-outs on the shuttle’s rudimentary scanners. Dire situation indeed. Opening a radio channel, she hails the crippled freighter. “Zygo Corp, this is Civ Shuttle 11286. Do you copy?” She waits to the count of ten and repeats her hail. Poor bastards, it’s anyone’s guess how long they waited before succumbing.
The radio crackles with an incoming response. “Civ Shuttle, this is First Officer Paraag of Zygo Corp’s Mantrix. Are you local?”
Rey nods, then responds, “I have visual on your ship, Mister Paraag. You folks need a hand?”
“Anything you can spare, Civ.” The voice is heavy with relief. “There’s ten of us on board. Ship’s toast, but if you can give us a lift to the nearest port we’ll make it worth your while.”
“It’ll be tight, man, I’ve only got 5 seats on this thing.” Her shuttle hadn’t been built to transport large numbers of passengers, but the life support could almost certainly handle the strain for a quick trip.
“Tight’s just fine by us, Civ Shuttle. “ The disembodied voice shakes with emotion. “You can dock in the first bay; life support’s still intact there. We’re camped just inside the doors.”
“Understood,” Under her instruction, the shuttle glides into the slitted opening of the huge freighter, unhindered by the atmospheric membrane keeping the ship’s life support where it belongs. The transport makes contact with the deck, jostling its solo passenger slightly and Rey drops out of her shuttle, looking around the empty hangar lit with weak red emergency lights, testing the air, the environment for anything untoward. Her skin prickles, but it doesn’t feel wrong, just creepy, which if her experience as a scavenger is anything to go by, is more or less normal. Still, she grips the hilt of Luke’s, of her, she corrects herself, lightsaber and partially conceals it in her sleeve. Even if it’s a legitimate cry for help, the survivors could be irrational, and they outnumber her. Caution is required, even if everyone has the best intentions at heart it never pays to be stupid.
The blast door opens at her touch and Rey slips through it, flinching just a little as it bangs shut behind her. Slow, careful, she advances through the dimly lit corridor, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her mind that thinks this rescue ill-advised. There are people on board, people who need help. She can feel them.
Panels concealed in the walls shoot open and blinding white light floods the hall. It gleams off pristine white armor and reflects from the chromo fittings of a terrible, familiar mask.
The lightsaber ignites in her hands before her eyes adjust to the sudden luminosity.
“I would reconsider that course of action if I were you.”
The smug satisfaction she feels coming off Kylo Ren makes her want to puke. Rey swallows tightly and adjusts her grip, holding the glowing beacon of energy higher. “Oh really?” It comes out a snarl.
Kylo nods, arms crossed over his chest, still unarmed, unconcerned. “Orders are to take you alive, not unharmed.” The blast door behind Rey opens again and two more Stormtroopers step through, blasters trained on her back, remaining a safe distance beyond her striking range.
Does she want to be taken alive to wherever Kylo Ren has in mind? Rey isn’t so sure on that one, but she’s pretty sure that she doesn’t want to die, not here, not like this, and she certainly doesn’t want to deal with Kylo Ren in anything less than her best possible state, which precludes letting them maim her.
“You are surrounded, outnumbered fifteen to one, outmaneuvered. Please don’t be foolish about this.”
Kylo Ren’s sincerity disgusts her, after all he’s done he has the gall to feel concern over this? The lightsaber flicks off and she extends the warm piece of metal that’s as much a part of her soul as anything else to the two trooper’s approaching warily. The ones that drew the short straws, she guesses. One snatches the weapon from her grip, the other snaps heavy metal cuffs around her wrists, binding them together in front of her chest. “What did you do to the crew?”
Through the connection resurging through her head, she feels Kylo Ren’s brief flair of surprise, then amusement. “There was no crew,” He shrugs, “Just an opportunity.”
A trap, her mind supplies the translation as Rey resists the gloved hands dragging her forward. She hates being man-handled and jerks out of their grasp, holding herself upright and taking slow dignified steps under her own power, glaring at the flowing material covering Kylo Ren’s back. If it was possible to hate someone to death, she thinks she could just about manage it with the awful piece of shit leading her back through the twisting corridors.
The group escorting her, such as the word applies, emerges in a hangar much like the one she had parked her shuttle and a hard hand nudges her sharply as her feet grind to a drag as the ramp comes closer. It would be nice to remain dignified, but the looming black ship with high angular wings makes the inevitability all too real.
If she gets on that thing, she’s probably never leaving.
The blow echoes in her ears before she feels it, something hard connecting midway down her back, a pain that sends her staggering against a trooper walking close in front of her, and if her hands weren’t pinioned from wrist to elbow she might have had a chance to grapple with him for a blaster. Instead he catches her elbow, rights her and steps quickly away as Kylo Ren freezes at the top of the ramp and turns.
Emotions, flickering, frightening in their complexity wash around her awareness of the man and he looks at her, past her. His hand flashes, a gesture laden with violence, and something makes a faint breeze and a heavy clatter, a muffled groan. Footsteps, a new soldier moving up to fill the gap immediately behind her and Kylo Ren turns back to his ship, moving out of sight.
The pressure on her shoulders is professional, enough to bring motion to her frozen legs and nothing more. The inside of the craft is clean, neat, and shiny with newness; polar opposites of the previous vessels she’s ridden in. The seats are cushioned and the luxury of that strikes her as absurd. The Stormtroopers move around her, taking up stations by the door sliding shut or the cockpit for takeoff. Kylo Ren sits on a bench and Rey copies him, bracing her elbows on her knees in the only way to sit that doesn’t make her arms feel awkward, cuffed as they are. Troopers settle themselves on the long benches, giving the mismatched pair a healthy amount of space and the engines purr to life, bench vibrating subtly beneath her as the landscape blurs and they are space-borne. It takes only seconds for the enormous freighter to disappear from sight.
The pressure in her head shifts, a sudden resurgence and Rey glares death at the unchanging mask across from her. “Stop that!”
Kylo Ren shrugs, a subtle movement of his shoulders, “As you like.”
The pressure recedes abruptly and the void in her head stretches, suddenly achingly empty before her thoughts trickle back into the vacuum. It’s extremely unsettling, equally unpleasant as being grabbed and escorted to parts unknown by the First Order. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see.”
Kylo Ren persists in being an enigmatic pain in her ass as they leap into hyperspace until Rey is rendered speechless with frustration. When the ship lurches as they leave drop below light speed, her attention is captured by the enormous planet consuming the entire view out of the portal. “What is that?”
“Moraband,” Kylo’s voice takes on an odd lilt and Rey shivers at the word, meaningless as it is. “Birthplace of the Sith order, and its graveyard.”
“You don’t look particularly dead to me,” The venom gets lost between her thoughts and tongue, words slipping out quiet and empty. As they draw closer, break into the atmosphere, details of landscape emerge. Towering jagged mountains, black and rust-red, crumbled cities, fire scorched ships. “Does anyone live here?” Jakku is practically a luxury resort by comparison.
“It’s a sacred place.” Kylo Ren’s words don’t actually answer her question, but it doesn’t matter because the shuttle jolts as it lands and the ramp hisses down. He stands and in an almost gentlemanly gesture helps Rey to her feet. She twists away from his touch, rage sparking and holds her head high as she descends into a black world.
The air is sulfurous, vile and choking, it burns and it blinds the delicate membranes around her eyes. The masked uniforms suddenly make a lot more sense and she can’t brush the gloved hands off as they guide her down the runway. Rey catches a brief glimpse of enormous steel towers before she’s ushered through a thick, pitted steel door. The air is sweet inside and she gasps like a fish, briefly overwhelmed by a fit of choking before straightening. The Stormtroopers have dispersed, save for the guards by the heavy door separating the complex from the hell outside, it is just her and the Knight of Ren.
“This way,” Kylo makes no move to touch her, simply sets off down a gleaming white tiled hall. Considering her list of rather short options, Rey elects to follow. The chamber he leads her to is grimly ascetic, grey duracrete walls and wire brushed steel fixtures: bedstead and washbasin. He nods at the later, “You should clean up. There’s a change of clothes on the bed.”
With a disgusted roll of her eyes Rey holds her cuffed hands before the masked man in black. “You mind?”
“Not at all.”
The metal bindings fall away with a rasp and Rey springs at her captor. He hasn’t drawn a weapon on her yet, has gone to lengths to keep her safe and relatively unharmed. The lightsaber is a useful tool, but she can fight with just about anything, fists and feet included. The Force answers her sluggishly, power that should be hers lurking in the distance. Just beyond reach.
Kylo Ren’s hand comes up, freezing her flight towards him, toes just brushing the floor. “Don’t try that again.” His fingers wrap around her closed fist and he sets her back on the floor with the greatest care.
Amusement tinges her awareness of him, makes Rey burn with ire. “What if I do?”
“I think you know,” Kylo removes his hand from his weapon and she can just imagine the task of trying to escape from a place like this even if she could best the older knight with his full complement of powers. An unmapped planet where she can barely see on the surface, much less find a craft and navigate home. “You will feel better if you wash the ash off. The Supreme Leader will be expecting you shortly.”
The room tilts on a dizzying axis and Rey feels a roaring in her ears. “Supreme Leader? Snoke?” The name is poison on her tongue and she needs the edge of the bedframe to steady herself, to keep from doing anything weak and ridiculous in front of this pet monster. “What does he want with me?”
“He has not confided in me,” Kylo’s voice is careful, even less emotion behind the distorter than she’s encountered before. “I believe it is an academic curiosity that motivates him.”