30. Chapter 30

They’re being hailed. Rey is bleeding out behind him and they’re being hailed.

Kylo’s stomach drops as they hit low space and are surrounded by X-wings painted with the orange of the Resistance. They circle the shuttle, locking him in their fields of fire. The comm light blinks at him and he slams his fist against it because what else is he going to do? Not answer and get shot out of the sky? He tilts the eye of the transmitter towards Rey. She’s going to need to talk fast if they want to live through this.

A face appears on the screen and he doesn’t recognize it at first, without the arrogant defiance it held on Jakku. The man is grinning, ebullient, until he catches sight of Rey.  The voice doesn’t match with the tortured screams he’d incited on Star Killer, but as the face falls and the man cries out, he knows it’s Poe Dameron, Rey’s Resistance contact.

“Rey, what the hell?  What happened?”

“Hey, Poe.” Rey sounds awful, feels worse.  She’s throbbing in his mind, more wound than intact body, and her throat gurgles as she speaks.  “This is Kylo.”  He feels her eyes on him and he glances up at her.  His stomach heaves and there’s bile in his throat again. Her eyes are closing and there’s too much blood pooling at her feet. “Kylo,” she says, voice almost gone, “Be nice.  Poe blew up Snoke’s base for you.” The words flutter weakly and a whisper of a thought, please , brushes his mind before she slumps over.

“Shit!” Kylo leaps out of the chair, adrenaline and panic overpowering his better judgment. He is reminded a moment later that his leg is fucked from the knee down but he catches himself on the unyielding floor with a bang. He pulls himself to hands and knees and scrambles to where she’s slipping down.

“Kylo? Kylo Ren ? As in the First Order?” Dameron’s voice cracks in disbelief. “You have got to be shitting me.”

Her skin is ashen beneath the golden tan and her breath bubbles up, weak, through a mouth and nose crusted in blood. “Rey?” He catches her head before it can hit the ground, pulls it onto his lap. “Rey!” He pats roughly at her cheeks, not wanting to hurt her but needing to get her eyes open again. “Shit!” The front of her borrowed shirt is a mess, soaked through with rapidly cooling blood. “Rey, open your eyes!”

Her eyes are flickering, darting behind closed lids.  Their connection is weak, fading, and something huge and empty is roaring up from the pit of his stomach to devour the little hope he has left.  He shoves it down, tears his gaze from her face, fumbles with the med kit, each slow beat of her heart echoing in his mind. She’s still alive still alive still alive. For now.

The plastic of the case splinters under his hands as the shuttle speeds on, aimless. He paws through the scattered contents, broken hand forgotten in his haste, grabs at the open pack of bacta patches.  Not enough, not nearly enough, but they’ll help. One is missing - did she get it on herself? Kylo looks back to her chest, then down to her limp hands, where the largest patch rests, unopened.  He snatches it and begins to work the shirt up her chest.  She whimpers as he jostles her, pain sparking in all the half-forgotten injuries.

He tears the flimsy wrapper off the bacta patch with his teeth and presses it against the dark blood oozing out of the hole in her chest, just above her breast band.

“Did you do it? Is Snoke dead?” Dameron’s voice crackles over the comm, too calm, too fucking calm . The idiot is just watching as Kylo holds Rey’s life together with both hands. Maybe he wants Rey to die - that way he could just blast the shuttle into oblivion and fly off into the sunset, a hero.

“No.” Even in her semi-conscious state, Rey grits her teeth and winces as he lifts her back from the floor. He feels along her shoulders and spine for an exit wound and is sick with relief when he doesn’t find any.  Kylo gets another patch open, rips it in half, seals it over the ugly gash at her hairline.  Her skin is gritty, caked in soot, drenched in blood. He tries to wipe the worst of it away from her face, but he’s so covered in gore himself that it does no good.

“Is she dead?” There’s a harshness to the pilot’s voice. Kylo senses something there -  a pain where practicality demands to be heard over sentiment. His growing hatred for the man slows.

“Not yet.”  He pulls the backing off of the last patch and smooths it over the slice across her bicep, continues the motion to slide down  her wrist to hold her hand.  Her fingers are cold.  His pulse spikes.  Her skin is always so warm, sunlight and fire when she touches him. She’s dying by inches, by drops and pints, and he can do nothing.  His eyes swim and he combs through the med-kit again, but it’s just the same useless shit.  There’s nothing to replenish what she’s lost.  This is a transport shuttle meant to be part of a flotilla. No need to carry medical supplies when there’s a fully stocked armada at your back.

Dameron’s hands move off screen and the audio cuts out. He’s muted himself as conferences with his fellow pilots. He stares at something beyond the input transmitter and shakes his head, an emphatic negative. The image is too small for Kylo to read his lips, but what would it matter, anyway?

What does any of this matter if Rey dies?

The audio cuts back in and Dameron stares down at Kylo. “Okay, bud. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to escort you via low space into a neutral territory. You’re going to land, nice and easy. We’re going to secure your vessel.  Then we’re going to take Rey back. You come peaceably and everyone gets out of this in one piece. Understand?”

“Get fucked, flyboy!” Kylo snarls, enraged and helpless. He smashes his fist into the wall behind him and the plate metal buckles. He has no choice. He never had a choice. “There’s no time!  She’s dying on the fucking floor! Give me the damned coordinates to your base and I’ll jump it.” Rey makes a tiny noise and he whips back to her, hunches down, holds her face in his hands. Her nose wrinkles almost imperceptibly and she makes that same pained whimper.  His heart hammers in his battered chest.

The comm is quiet for a very long time. Maybe Dameron is busy, distracted, but Kylo can’t imagine what could be more important than this conversation. Poe’s voice snaps through the speakers, now careful and controlled. “I’m forwarding you the jump coordinates. We have every goddamn rocket left aimed at your ass, Ren. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Try me!” Kylo growls and the link goes dead. A light indicating a new message blinks on the console. The coordinates.  Kylo pulls himself up enough to slam the destination into the autopilot before falling back to the floor. He braces himself on the dented wall and pulls Rey over to him, lifting her head into his lap and cradling it as the ship launches into hyperspace. She hisses, wincing at the jolt. He runs his unbroken fingers through her matted hair and their bond flares.  His mind is racing and he tries to quiet it, pulling in long, meditative breaths.  He can’t manage a full trance, wouldn’t want to, but he uses the calm he finds to center himself and pour his remaining power into her.

The Force streams from him, smoothing the harshest edges off of his mind as it goes, aided in that by the slow steadying of her breath, the strengthening of her pulse.  The shock is wearing off now and the pain throughout his body is returning, but he ignores it, shoves it back into those boxes. He turns his mind instead to the contemplation of the rekindling of some warmth in her skin, to ghosting his fingertips across her lips, her eyelids.  The power between them strengthens, coursing like a river.

As the ship shakes, returning them to low space, he pulls back from the torrent, siphoning it to a steady continuous flow.  She’s stabilized, he thinks, though he has no experience in field medicine. She hasn’t gotten any worse, and that’s something.

As they descend over a planet scattered with clouds over earth and sea, Rey’s fingers dig into the ruin of Kylo’s leg and he chokes on a scream.  Her eyes fly open, shared agony dragging her fully awake.  Her thoughts are still disoriented, dizzy, consumed by pain and apology - I’m sorry!

He doesn’t care about his leg. She opened her eyes. Words fail him. He runs a thumb along her cheek. She’s alive and nothing else matters.

She returns the thought, wondering at it as she gazes up into his face. We’re alive.

He bends over her, presses his torn lips to hers, broken fingers tangling in her hair.  He ignores the pain.  It is irrelevant. She tastes like blood and so does he and he doesn’t care. His tears streak through the grime on her face.

Dameron’s voice crackles over the comm again. “Okay, Ren. Bring it down slow. No funny business. We’re almost there.”

Rey draws the Force around her for strength and crawls through the mess of her own blood to the console, waving at Kylo to stay seated. She’s a natural pilot and, after a moment of fumbling, encourages the craft into its descent, leaving gory handprints all over the gleaming chrome controls. She pokes at the bacta patch on her chest, winces but doesn’t cry out, before grabbing  the pike from where he had dropped. She uses it to drag herself back, propping her weight heavily on the long shaft and reaches down to brush his cheek. The stars whirl back to life in his head, calm and bright and singing. I won’t let anything happen to you.

The smile stretches his face, cracks his lips open again, and he kisses her knuckles when they move to wipe the blood away. He knows she’ll try. She knows she’s all he has.

Her face twists, sorrow and fear battling with something more tender, and she draws back from him as they land.  He can feel a crowd gathering outside the ship, anxious, jumpy. Rey offers him her hand, sucking in borrowed strength.  She helps him balance when he stands and then moves to place herself between him and the opening doors, throwing up the strongest Force barrier she can. She raises her free hand, the one not supporting her weight on the staff, into the air, urges him to do the same. Reluctant, he raises the hand that isn’t clenched on her shoulder.

A wave of armored men and women crashes up the ramp, surges in to circle them.  They all have blasters, muzzles pointed at his head. His heart clenches with fear as he realizes that the blasters aren’t just for him - they’re trained on Rey, too.   So much for a friendly welcome.

She scowls at that, at the small army standing between them and the exit. The Force shimmers blue around them as she adjusts her grip on the pike. It’s too large, too unwieldy to be used effectively in this small space.

“Stand down, lady.” A voice rings out, distorted and amplified in the tiny interior of the shuttle. He can only guess which member of the crowd it’s coming from. They won’t last long if these assholes start shooting.  He lets his power stream through the hand resting on her shoulder, strengthening the shield.

“We’re coming to you peacefully.” The shield shimmers again as she diverts the flow of his power from the shield, using it to steady her voice instead. Rey drops the pike and raises both hands now, legs trembling as she stands between him and them. “We are not here to fight. I’m going to lower the shield.” She pauses before doing so, glancing into the helmeted faces of the Resistance. “Don’t shoot us, please.”

It hurts her to move the injured shoulder and that pain cuts into him, but she holds her empty hands high.  Blood seeps from under the patch on her chest as her arms tremble, streams in rivulets down her breast, soaking into her belt and pants.  A sharp stab of anger flashes across his mind but she lashes out at it, tamps it down. Stay calm. Don’t give them a reason.

The shield winks out.

The muzzles stay pointed at them and the armored bodies close in. Rough hands clamp down on her arms, jerking her away. He stumbles as she’s pulled from him, trying to hold himself up with one good leg. Rey yelps, pain flaring up her shoulder as they hustle her down the ramp, lancing across her chest as blunt fingers dig into her wounded arm.

Rey is crying out, yelling for him to be calm. He tries to move to catch sight of her again but strange, hard hands grab him.  They snatch away his saber, shove his head down, and red starts to creep into his vision.  She’s panicking now, enveloped by the press of bodies, and her fear burns away the last of his control.  He roars, erupts, lashing out with power.  The explosion of Force throws the closest assailants back and he uses the gap created to lunge for her.  Their fingers brush and she screams his name, high and terrified, but then his leg gives way and she’s torn from him again, beyond his reach.

Bodies pile onto him, holding him down, smacking his head against the floor.  Kylo’s arms are yanked behind his back and he struggles to rise, but someone stomps down on his bad leg.  He bellows in pain, almost tears his own shoulder out of its socket as he struggles against the cold metal clicking around his wrists, his ankles.  She screams again and it’s cut off.  He calls for her with his torn voice and his mind, and she responds but it’s weak in his head. I’m here. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to make this-

Then something cracks against the back of his skull and everything goes dark.