Author's Note: Thank you to all the readers who have continued to vote and comment - you truly keep the fire alive for this story. I'm so passionate about the slow build-up of relationship between Ben and Rey, and how they will sort through their issues while approaching conflict in this universe. Being married, I'm so passionate about the theme of conflict, as it is something that really defines the stability of a relationship because it's where we tend to show our true selves.
*
The younger Rey looked on at her with shock and disbelief, stumbling back two steps on the snow-covered rocks.
"How is this possible?" her innocent voice breathed, one small hand gripping the blue lightsaber tightly.
Rey in the black robes stretched out each arm, noticing how shapely and toned each one was with defined forearms and slender fingers with a single silver ring around her forefinger. Her right hand held a double cylinder, its design foreign to her.
"You're a monster" Young Rey said through teary eyes filled with anguish, her gaze looking beyond the black-clothed version of herself.
Rey followed her gaze, looking over her shoulder to see three smoking bodies laying in the snow, spattered with red blood on the perimeter.
A brown pilot jacket over dark skin.
A tan shirt with light skin and dark hair.
The snow-dusted bodies of Finn and Poe lay face down behind her.
The third body was on its side and the empty eyes of Kylo Ren staring back at her, locked in a death stare of shock and sadness. The sight of him was almost too real to be an illusion.
With a hoarse scream, Young Rey charged her with the outstretched lightsaber.
When she squeezed the foreign cylinder, it opened up, swinging on a hinge and locking into a double-edged sword. They engaged in battle, swinging and ducking from one another's moves.
Rey's black robes whirled around her as she spun, and that desirable, blood-thirsty feeling coiled within her gut again in response to the melee.
"Why did you kill them? I don't understand!" Young Rey shouted at her, as her lightsaber struck hard on one end of the red staff.
Angry at her accuser, Rey made blow after blow against Young Rey, forcing her to walk backwards from the onslaught. She could see her arms were tiring on each of the double strikes, and eventually there was an opening.
Rey thrust her lightsaber through the open spot, impaling her own self on the red blade. A look of horror and pain crossed Young Rey's face, and tears started to fall in her agony. She fell to the ground, at first presumably dead, but not before she started to crawl past Rey's feet towards the bodies. A moment of mercy was gifted to her as Rey looked on without pursuit. Pitifully, she crawled on her belly with one hand clutched to her abdomen, until she reached the body of Kylo Ren. She pulled herself beside him and cradled his face as she whispered his given name, weeping weakly for a few moments before all went quiet and still. The delicate hand on his cheek limply fell to the snow.
Deeply disturbed by what transpired, Rey felt her stomach turn over itself with the sensation of vomiting. Trying her best to swallow it back down, the horror of the scene before her was too much, and the contents of her insides erupted into her throat.
*
The sensation of fluid in her chest was strange. She felt like a waterfall was pouring out of her insides as she struggled to get some oxygen between heaving. The world was dark as she emptied herself, retching violently through the bruised, tearing pain in her chest.
A broad hand on her back helped support her to sit up and lean forward, and everything in her vision was so vague through her stinging eyes. Strong hands, black shirt....dark hair. The scent of wet earth and leather was mildly detectable through her burning nostrils. Her fingers clawed against a firm chest as she struggled to breath through the torrent that kept gushing from her lungs, and Rey's mind was still trying to comprehend the vision she'd been immersed in; the images of the bodies laying in the snow were still painful and real. The coughing continued to rack her, and she groaned between each at the immense pain that accompanied every breath until she had calmed herself.
"It hurts to breathe" she managed to say with raw vocal cords.
Hazel eyes stared at her through dripping strands of wet hair in an intense mixture of sadness and relief; the eyes of Kylo Ren. She quickly realized that this was not a force bond connection and her fingers grasping the fabric of his tunic was a strange sensation in her hand. Shivering in her soaked state, she couldn't quite read the expression on his face but it blatantly reminded her of the very first time they connected on Ahch-To before she had pulled the trigger on the blaster. A look that was very different than on Starkiller base.
What? She wanted to say, but before she could say anything at all, he did something that took her by surprise in her shaken state.
With what appeared to be an immense amount of self-control, Ren leaned forward on his knees, and carefully put his arms around Rey. The contact was light at first but he sunk his arms around her fully as she leaned into his chest, his labouring breaths rattled just above her ear. The heat of his body penetrated his tunic and sufficiently warmed her as she pressed into him. The bond was full of mixed emotions, but an overwhelming and powerful wave of compassion covered all of them as they flowed through her. It was overjoyed relief that she was alive.
Her thoughts raced as she felt his breathing start to recover. He feared losing her.
"You'll turn...I'll help you."
In the strip lighting, she noticed two bodies were rolling in the gentle waves against the shore of the room, only a few steps away from them. She saw long hair on one, and a short cut on the other.
My parents...
She was afraid to ask. "Did you kill them?" was all she managed to utter quietly as she peered over his shoulder.
A pause ensued, followed by a "yes" rumbling through his chest.
Pain stabbed her in the heart again as a swell of grief attempted to rise.
"You're a monster" she whispered.
With what strength she could muster, she pulled back to look him in the face and struck him with a wet slap from her right hand. He simply closed his eyes to receive it, the bond surely giving away the action with a precursor from her tired, unprotected mind. At the moment her palm connected with his cheek, Rey let out a painful cry as she shook out her clenched hand. The unnatural soreness took her by surprise, bringing up her right hand to the dim light to reveal a small bore hole into the meaty part of her palm that was still bleeding. It was difficult to tell what damage had been caused by it.
Ren turned his face away from her, his expression indifferent and distant as she sensed the wall close up between their bond; he was protecting his thoughts from being read. The lack of reaction from him only infuriated her further. She raised her hand again but he snatched her wrist out of the air and pulled it to his shoulder, nearly nose to nose with Rey.
"Take a closer look at the bodies" he ordered with an ardent stare, "before you strike me again."
Yanking her wrist from his grasp with a burning look, Rey shakily stood from the ground on weakened legs that seemed only to muster the strength to take short, unstable strides past him. Her father's body was nearest, planted by a shoulder on part of the slanted floor as the rest of his body floated in the water. In the crimson light, she could already see the back of his neck appeared different. She grasped the top shoulder to pull the body toward her; when it flopped onto it's back, Rey gasped as she stumbled backward and fell on her rear.
Green, reptilian skin covered spiny cheekbones with wide set eyes; the face bore no resemblance to the man it initially appeared as. A glance at the other body observed the same cheekbones and Rey knew that was the only confirmation she needed. She pulled her knees up to her chin and covered her mouth; deep in thought, feeling mislead and aimless. Where she thought she finally had answers and connected with the only people that may have once cared about her, now that path was empty and void.
"What are they?" her voice quiet and almost childlike.
Ren retrieved his lightsaber from the chamber entrance, and then wrung out his cloak over the water.
"Clawdites. Shapeshifters."
Rey noticed he was unreadable, and guilt began to trickle into her conscience. "Kylo...I'm sorr-"
"We need to leave" he cut her off abruptly. The bond pulsed rhythmically with his tension.
Rey wanted to crumble and weep; she'd wasted time chasing the very thing that stole all her time on Jakku. The scratches on the wall that kept track of all her days since being left behind were for nothing. Turning down a job with Han Solo who had treated her so kindly, all because she 'had to get back home', was for nothing. Finally, she'd been sidetracked from her recruiting mission and taken on a wild goose chase only to turn up empty-handed once again.
There's absolutely nothing here.
"Before I pulled you from the water, the female Clawdite said 'it was finished'. She eluded that you were lead here for a reason."
Her spiralling thoughts went silent as they tried to comprehend the events leading up to this moment. She lifted the hand against her mouth away to see the blood still weeping from the wound in the palm, co-mingling with the water continuously dripping from her clothes.
"It's your greatest weakness, searching for them everywhere. In Han Solo, and now in Skywalker."
Ren looked from the corner of his eye at her as he sensed the memory of his own voice in her mind. "I tried to warn you."
When Rey didn't answer, he continued. "It will be dark soon. Tyrus should be waiting for us."
"To take me back to my friends?" she asked with a touch of sarcasm.
A moment passed before he answered coolly. "If that is what you wish."
She wanted to throw her hands up in frustration at his response. He'd obviously been practising staying calm and collected since their interaction in the hanger bay on the base, perhaps a trait also needed acting as The Supreme Leader.
"Is that what you want?" she said hotly.
Ren turned to meet her gaze, and was about to answer before he decidedly sidestepped the question. "What I want is to discuss how foolish you were for following Armitage Hux out here."
"I know it was!" Rey exclaimed, "so we can add 'fool' right next to 'nothing' on the list of compliments you've graced me with."
Ren's eyes flickered angrily at her and he burst forward in five lumbering steps to where she sat on the ground. She leapt up instantly, teetering on her heels as the dizziness plagued her again but remained upright to meet his smouldering gaze with a defiant one of her own. Rey had a fleeting notion he might strike her, but as they stared each other down just inches apart she perceived that he wasn't even looking at her eyes. There was no attempted prodding of her mind and any rage that presented initially was now obsolete between the two of them in the chamber.
Rey realized that it was her lips his eyes were studying intently with the same hunger that radiated from him in the elevator in Snoke's ship. There was a peculiar feeling in Rey's belly and she suddenly had the urge to look into his mind but resisted for fear of what she might find there. She could see it again in this moment; the molten intensity that was Ben Solo still existed inside the man standing before her, evidently when he couldn't seem to stay in the personification of Kylo Ren.
She wanted to be strong but her own resolve had limits. The inescapable pull still existed within her, stuck to her soul from the very moment she'd left that interrogation chair. For months she'd meditated diligently in her quarters on the base, intent on forgetting the way he looked at her. The expression on his face currently was not helping her cause.
The moment seemed to go on forever; Ren licked his lips and swallowed apprehensively.
A creaking groan sounded outside the room shortly followed by a rumble. The floor they stood on shifted violently, nearly knocking them both off their feet, Ren grabbed Rey's forearm to steady her before quickly letting go. They turned in unison to the sound of water loudly gargling at the back corner of the chamber as it started to churn powerfully and foam accumulated on the surface. The waterline on the shore began to creep up inch by inch.
"All the movement must have jostled something supporting this structure". Ren urgently motioned for her to head through the doorway. "Move out!"
With Ren on her heels, Rey sprinted up through the corridor laden with vegetation, the smell of damp moss still hung in the air. By the time she reached the partially open door to the bridge, both her legs felt like they were made of lead; the weakened muscles taxed from exertion that seemed so little, but her body was still recovering from the incident in the pool. She slipped through the door and stumbled out onto the bridge.
The squealing of warping steel echoed in the empty space around the bridge as it swayed capriciously, causing Rey to throw herself forward onto the rail in order to stay on her feet. Below the bridge, she could see the door of the shaft where they had entered swinging back and forth as the structure vibrated. Rey couldn't fathom the climb to get back to it.
Ren passed through the door, and came to the side of the bridge next to her to see the door. The bridge wavered only slightly, slowing to a still before the next tremor occurred.
"Do you want to go first?" he asked, stepping back from the rail.
Rey blinked as she stared down at the thrashing water below, the aching in her arms combined with shaking legs distracted her thoughts and her answer was distant. "I don't think I'll be able to go at all."
He squinted at her in the dim light, attempting to decipher the meaning behind her statement. The reality of her physical strength must have dawned on him suddenly as she watched him shake his head.
Would he belittle her for admitting that she didn't have the strength to make the climb?
A piece of debris crashed on the other end of the bridge, tearing apart the steel rods holding everything together. The lights on the core flickered as it sagged, pulling the bridge downward with it. There was a terrible screeching in the air as the bridge started to collapse, and the sides of the gigantic shaft were bending inwards as some incredible weight pressed through.
Ren grabbed her suddenly around the waist with his left arm arm, pulling at a metal tab from the wrist on the glove of his free hand. The silver tab was attached to a razor-thin black cable. His eyebrows were knit in full concentration as he hastily looped and tied it around the railing. Rey, paralyzed with fear, watched as the bridge started to fall away piece by piece, the metal debris tumbling into the water at the bottom of the shaft.
Hold on.
His arm gripped her firmly, and she instinctively gripped around him to clasp her hands over his opposite shoulder; he jumped and she couldn't help herself, eliciting a frightened shriek into his shoulder.
It was a surreal moment; the power of the leap seemed so disproportional to their capabilities as they completely cleared the railing and descended into the darkness over the water. Rey squeezed her grip tighter and held her breath as she waited for the violent yank that was coming. It was a hard jolt to both of them as the cable reached the end of it's length, and Ren swung his legs to use the momentum of the swing to reach the open panel, just catching the toes of his boots on the frame. Rey let one hand go to hold the panel door and assist with pulling them inside the shaft. She felt the Force nudge her inside, and gathered that he was using it to get them to safety. With one hand attached to the cable and the other now on the panel door, Ren threw himself onto the floor of the tunnel.
Rey tried her best to help him up, but her attention was stolen by the rest of the bridge disintegrating above the panel door. The remainder of it was peeling away from the frame, including the railing the cable was still attached to.
"Ben!" she pointed as it fell away, the shadow of it passing over the panel frame. Time slowed down as Ren looked down at his wrist, where the mechanism had cinched tightly to keep the glove on as they had descended. His left hand came up in a fist at an agonizing pace before his fingers exploded open to split the glove entirely with an invisible force.
The remnants of the glove ripped away from his hand and fell out of sight, crashing into the water with the rest of the bridge.
He looked up at her with an unfocused gaze, his lips parted as if he wanted to say something, but turned his head away and rose to his feet, hunching over to peer down the tunnel in the direction of the exit.
Rey's heart started to slow down as the panic of him getting pulled out of the panel dissipated, and her hands smoothed down her wet clothes. Her hand without a wound was streaked with blood, and she quickly felt over her clothes to see if she was bleeding from some unknown injury. Producing nothing, she noted that was the side of her body that was pressed against Ren.
"Are you bleeding?" Rey asked, coming up beside him.
"It's nothing" Ren answered flatly as he made his way forward.
Rey nodded to herself, remembering how he fought through the pain of Chewie's bowcaster shot. She followed him for a ways until the tunnel curved sharply vertical, and her heart sank knowing this was as far as they could go.
"I don't have any ideas, unless you are hiding a surprise in your other glove" she said with a dejected look, squatting down to take the load off her back.
Something rattled quietly above them in the tunnel, and Rey looked up to see twin cables slide down, coming to rest a couple feet up. Each one had a simple stirrup for one foot.
"Hey Lovebirds!" a familiar voice echoed down the tunnel, "finish up your personal business already. It's getting dark."
Rey smiled with relief. Vurdan and the Knights were waiting for them as hoped.