It is in these lips that hold the power to steal all the breath from my lungs and the darkness around us.
Silky flesh overlapping my own, his lips were the curtain to the show that was his tongue, which he used to explore my mouth and fight for dominance in this electric kiss.
This close, I can smell his musky-scent and I let it absorb into my own bones permanently, whilst his hands began printing invisible tattoos all over my flesh.
I curled my hands into his dark locks and lightly tugged, to which he moans passionately into my mouth. Bringing his hands up to my cheeks, I want those rough hands to never lift off my soft flesh, for it is the feel of them that sends my mind into a sensual state of intoxication. Kylo was a drug and I was its addict, never getting enough of the nirvana he brought to my blood.
Nirvana flows, and so does my adoration and elation which soars into my veins and soon, the entire system as he continued to press his lips more impenetrably and rougher onto my own.
Biting on my bottom lip softly, his teeth gave goosebumps to my skin immediately. A shiver ran down my spine and a feeling of cold skin intruded his warmth. It crept underneath my clothes and spread all throughout my system like a lacy tide on a frigid winter beach.
The cold moves in only to meet the warmth of my blood, my defence against such ice. I felt it wash over my skin, only to be met by the beat of my heart which even in this onslaught, never wanted Kylo's lips to leave my own—but when my cold finger-tips crept down to the back of his neck, he pulled away.
Just by looking at me, it was as if every ounce of breath was taken from my lungs, only using it as fuel to make the stars behind us brighter. As I watched the way his glossy lips tugged up and into a smile, I matched it with my own.
"Are you cold?" He asked, brown eyes staring deeply into mine as if he wanted to jump into the inky colour and bathe in its desire.
I felt his hands move up and into my hair, twirling with his long fingers as he released it. I rolled my eyes in the kitchen and played with the hem on the back of his collar.
"Only a little," I lie; beneath a swarm of goose-pimples. "It doesn't matter, though." I leant in, ready to return my mouth to his but just as our lips brushed, he chuckled against the tender flesh.
Kylo's hand then left my scalp and moved back down to my cheekbones, his big hands holding my face close to his as he kissed me once and returned those honey eyes back to mine.
"Let me try something?" He whispered between our lips and I nodded—for I would let him do anything to me, even if he didn't ask.
With fingertips tip-toeing up to my temples, he lets his palms rest on my crimson cheeks. His insight started with a slight glimmer, like the air in front of me was being warped and twisted as I was sucked into a vision of some sort—a place far away and nowhere close to Finalizer, where my feet stay.
I closed my eyes and embraced what was to come—no longer rejecting it and causing a terrible pain in my system.
Everything is dark for a short moment behind my closed lids. I can still feel Kylo here, but only a small portion of him as if he looked over my shoulder but never stood by my side. I opened my eyes, but I didn't meet with his face, for it was no longer there.
My feet sunk into coarse sand. Softly golden with just the right amount of comforting warmth, it felt like a cosy embrace, one only matched by the warmth of the blaring sun above or Kylo's warm touch back on Finalizer.
Waves roared and rolled down, crashing onto the shore with a soft hiss and peeling away at the deep, bronze sand beneath my feet. The ocean lived right before my eyes and I made my way over. Eventually, the cool water laps at my feet, fizzing and bubbling with sea-foam, whilst a slight chill surged through me, but a small wave washed it away as it hit my soaking dress. Even though the sun is beating upon my skin and beaming in my eyes, I can't help but smile as the warmth caressed my face.
My lips parted and my heart tugged on the realism before me. I had never seen a beach before—only read about it in countless of folklore tales; their writing explaining it perfectly to how I now experience it. But still, this wasn't real. It was Kylo's power taking upon my senses and showing me something so extraordinary that it even made my goosebumps disappear.
Eyelids fluttering closed as I breathed in the crisp aroma. Scrunching my toes beneath the salty water, the sand is much softer. I bestowed my gaze to the fabricated horizon, the flaring hues of the sun melting into the sky and ocean like a divine painting. The forever stretching sea is masked with a sapphire overlay. I smiled as a shiver cascades down my spine, ready to return to blaring lights of overwhelming white. The sand blurs out in a blissful trance, the shore fading into darkness, vivid in only now my memory.
When another beauty is set before me, I never let my smile falter. Only let it grow.
Kylo's eyes sparkled and the light he once showed me, was kept alive in those honey-brown shades. Their light brown colour was soft and a ring of gold hung inside his iris, adding another layer of depth to his already, beautiful eyes.
"How did you do that?" I asked, my eyes searching for answer in the constellations of freckles upon his cheeks that stained the skin around the large scar.
He pulled me as close as I could go against his chest before my stomach—which was bigger than ever—pushed a distance between us. Though, I was nearing the end of my pregnancy, our bodies still fit together as if we were made just for this: to fall into one another, to feel this natural rhythm of our beating hearts.
He breathed out an airy breath and I felt it fan against my face. He then tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and said, "Just place your hands on my temples and think deeply about a place—any place... and then project it to me."
I bit my bottom lip, placing my nervous hands upon his temples hesitantly. I didn't know what I was doing at all. I didn't even know what to show him.
I had never been anywhere else other than Finalizer and the brick mansion that the First Order placed me in. But, I might as well show him those bricks in all its glory, for it was once my home.
I nodded and inhaled a deep, determined breath. Breaking eye contact and clenching my eyes tightly closed. I envisioned my home and used every once of ability in my mind to try and project it into his own mind, imagining this vision as a laser to his forehead.
I could sense his tall frame and feel the pulse in his temples. His own heartbeat bled into mine and I mimicked his breathing as I drowned in the trance I brought us into. Only it wasn't the brick mansion before us, nor the large tree in the field behind it.
Unlike his warm vision, mine was cold—so shatteringly cold, that my chin trembled and those goosebumps from before, returned. The three suns above, struggled to touch my flesh through the murky clouds that distorted them. The air was frozen lace. My feet crunched in the snow.
The snowflakes danced in the muffled light, a choreographed ballet routine that was conducted by solely, the gentle wind. I turned around quickly, and all at once, spotted the wooden house. It crouched low into the snow's embankment, as if it was trying to hide, but the slate roof was too high to go unnoticed—which beneath the snow that had settled upon it, looked like a feather cushion, soft and warm, covering the rich, deep wood in perfect white.
Through the mist, I could see the wood rotting but it still stayed strong in the wind, maintaining its barrier for the warm home inside.
I knew this wasn't the home I wanted to show him... but indeed, it was in fact once my home a distant lifetime ago.
I couldn't see Kylo, but I knew he was experiencing the same thing on his own. I didn't know what he was doing in this fabricated, but all too real, vision. He could be in the home for all I knew, but my hesitancy to enter the cottage was too strong, and eventually everything became too much as I tore us out.
I'm panting in his face and my eyes went glassy, but not out of sadness, rather instead, shock.
Kylo knitted his dark eyebrows together and pulled my hands away from his face to hold them in his own, right above my stomach.
"That was your old home," He breathed, thumbs brushing delicately upon the back of my hand.
I shrugged.
"I didn't know that was what I would subconsciously show you," I forced a deceiving smile upon my face and shake my head. "I don't even know why it took over what I had originally planned."
Kylo dropped one of my hands, only to place one back on my cheek. "It's because you miss it... don't you?"
My mouth went dry and I blinked a couple of times in a conflicting mess of emotions.
"I-I guess?"
I sounded desperate and naive. I raised my lonely hand, returning it to his upon my warm flesh.
Something flashed beneath the surface of Kylo's expression and in his eyes of sudden grief, I could somewhat see my own reflection. He and I are the same, maybe it was the metaphorical rope that made us this way or just instead, we truely cared for one another.
He didn't say anything else, and neither did I. The only thing we could do in this silence was fall into another, passionate kiss. Arms wrapping over each-other and only tearing away when he eventually had to leave and I headed out to meet Four in the Dining Hall for a catch-up.
Kylo eyed me as I parted ways with him and as if I could read his mind, I answered his questioning eyes with a small laugh.
"Four's my friend," I smiled, the device from nearly three months ago, feeling heavy behind the band of my undergarments.
I had tried to figure out the device for a while after that night I had figured out what it was, but eventually, I gave up; shoving it back under my mattress and forgetting it entirely until last night... when it began to beep again.
I needed Four's help. Four, who for the past eight months, had been reading every possible novel about mechanical equipment, upon the other several topics he had been forced to memorise, too.
Kylo Ren only lifted his helmet over his head. The metal hissed and clasped together with a brutal hum.
"I know. I believe you," the mechanical voice breathed as Kylo tugged on his leather gloves. He waved two fingers in the air as a goodbye and I smiled, doing the same.
Even though Kylo is no longer with me, I can still feel his lips upon my own and his hands upon my flesh, and I basked in all the heat it brings. I am finally in a place of safe harbour, of laughter and tenderness, and I kept that same giddy smile, down every empty hallway and on the way to the Dining Hall. Rounding the final corner and pushing the doors open to reveal the only person in the Hall, my grin falters. Dropping to the floor immediately and replacing it with wide eyes.
The blood drained from my skin and every movement became frozen as if my bones and muscles had all turned into cement. Eyes stuck on the person at the table—who should have been Four—the surprise washed over my face for the person to see. My voice draws out slowly, as if hesitant to speak at all...
"Five?"
In that moment, my footsteps walk slowly closer even though they wished to turn around and run away instead. If the room had been any lighter, the bulbs would have shattered with all this anxious electricity coursing through my system.
When he meets my eyes from metres away, standing up from his chair in the empty Dining Hall, it is the stars from the wide window behind that struck his brown hair, illuminating his strong profile just enough before he moved away from its haze.
"Six," He speaks and I notice the way his Adams-apple bobs as he does so.
Barely three steps away from each-other, in this suspended moment... we're strangers. Now, it is only me and the boy I used to call my most trusted friend, the one who was once more reliable to live upon than breathable air.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, furrowing my brows and wringing my fingers together in front of my expanded stomach.
The floor seemed to be caving in beneath my knees and the lights are now suddenly too bright. All perception of time becomes distorted and everything slows down until there is nothing. Nothing but Five, who stood inches away from me. No longer was that usual emotionless face I had grown accustomed too, staring intently into my soul—but rather, sad hazel eyes instead.
"Four told me you would be here..." He replied, bottom lip quivering slightly as he looked down to my large stomach, which was so much bigger than he remembered from months earlier.
"How many months?" He asked and I huffed an offended breath as I scrunched my face into a hurt scowl.
Five wore a face like he's expecting anger from me and rightfully so—as I spat my next words when those hazel eyes begin to droop to the combat boots he wore.
"Just reached eight months yesterday. Why do you suddenly care?"
His eyes snapped back to me and his lips twitched downwards.
"I can't live like this anymore, Six," He croaked behind glassy eyes. My heart threatened to crack but the gates surrounding don't even let him in to chip away at it—locked up tightly, from all the hurt he had once caused.
I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat down, but it never left. "Live like what?" I asked, but I had a gut feeling that I already knew his answer.
Sighing, he bites the inside of his cheek like he would when he was frustrated or nervous. Raising his eyebrows and shaking his head, he says, "Living like we have forgotten who we once were."
I huffed a fake chuckle and rolled my eyes. I would have crossed my arms over my chest but my stomach was in the way.
"I never forgot who I was. You were the only one to change." I retorted, squinting my eyes.
Meeting my cold demeanour, Five forced a small, sad smile and within it, I recalled my soul as I remembered all the memories we once shared.
"I'm sorry for the way I have acted."
That's not enough.
"I can't just forgive you because you have said sorry."
Five's face twitched in pain and I could tell he was thinking so deeply as he stared. Though, he didn't look at me rather instead, through me, like my head was transparent and he was fascinated by an object two inches behind my skull. But I only knew he was doing so to fight the tears that threatened to form above the hazel.
"I know." He nodded, crossing his leathered hands behind his back, "That will just be something I will always have to live with forevermore, without your forgiveness."
My heartache rung me out until I was dry inside and for Five, no more tears would ever come. My insides still felt as raw as if a winter wind was blowing right through my skin. The change in him by the First Order's hand had taunted me for so long, and although, these eyes that are pleading to me are the same as they once were, I still can't forget that change.
With my swollen feet becoming sore from standing for so long, I shift on my feet and a cold reminder of the device in the band of my undergarments, lead my mind back to Four—who although, he had somewhat betrayed me by telling Five I would be here, was still so pure as the same boy he once was.
The First Order had torn their claws into Five, and had left Four astray as if he was the runt of the litter. All Four wanted to do was train his physicality, to learn more of the force rather than a book's words—and I knew that feeling all too well, so as I mustered up my own pride for the sake of his, I looked back into Five's eyes and said,
"I would forgive you only if you showed to me that you truely cared."
Shaking his head as if it was loosely attached, he reaches to grab my hands but I flinched them away.
"Anything, Six!"
I didn't forgive him, but I hadn't yet lied. If he did what I next said, maybe that would prove the old Five was still somewhat in that machine.
"Allow Four to train with you once again."
Five furrowed his brows and his hand faltered upon his belt that held his deadly lightsaber. "...That's not my choice." He said slowly.
Not backing down, I scoffed, "Then change whoever placed that order's mind."
"Six," He began, "I can't help what they do with Four. The First Order only want the strongest. If they don't see potential in him, they won't bother to train him to find out in the first place."
"Bullshit!' I seethed, taking a small step closer. "That's a waste of his purpose and you know it!"
"It's not a waste. It's calculative," He sighed, a broader chest to what I was used to, moving up and down slowly. "The First Order never waste their resources, they just find another purpose for it."
Everything was a blur, a blur that swirled out of existence and suspended in the air. I closed my eyes momentarily and surrendered myself for the anger to come.
"Then what am I?" I asked.
"–A calculative resolution?" I continued.
That was the breaking point of my patience. At that moment, I was blinded by the rage that made my face and sight go red. "Is is because I am not a man that's force sensitive... does that make my power any less than yours?"
"I—" He began, but I cut him off.
"—Because that is what I am understanding from your words. And that is exactly what the First Order did," I motioned to my stomach. "They forced me to carry a child, when I am only a year off from still being one myself! I am not a person to them, and now... I wonder if I am even a person to you either."
Five's face fell flat. He tensed his jaw and looked away shortly, eyes only returning when he has mustered up the courage to finally tell me the words that have waited on his tongue for years now.
"You're more than just a person to me," He muttered, a silent tear falling from one eye and down his cheek. He stops his words, leaving the air silent as he twitched his head to the right slightly, urging me to understand him without him having to describe what he meant.
I take a step back, shaking my head and lifting my hands up in defence. He followed me closer with a pleading look in his eyes as all of his limbs begin to feel desperate, almost reaching out towards my rejection.
"Dont." I warned him, my voice cracking at the end.
"Six, you have to know how I feel," He urged. His words were distressed and in anguish, his cheeks began to tint red and his hair fell limply as did his emotion as he trudged closer.
"No, I don't. I don't need to either," I pleaded for him to stop, but he ignored my words.
"I have loved you since we were children!" He yelled.
I flinched.
Five began to stutter and his dialogue becomes erratic, the deep truth taking over his tongue but not knowing how to work it entirely.
"I can't help it. And—and... I have tried to hide it for so long because I know the consequences that may follow, but all those months ago when Snoke gave Four hope of love, he gave it to me too."
"Five, please..." I sadly breathed, my chin wobbling and tears beginning to form. "Stop."
But he doesn't stop.
"You must have had some inkling! I made it so obvious, even though I didn't try to!" He bellowed, throwing his arms in the air and slapping them back down to his sides as if to crash the walls around us too. "I've waited and waited. And I thought I could suppress it forever—"
"Please, Five."
"—I used to find it so easy to keep it all bottled inside of me, Six. And I did all of that because..." He croaked.
My heart was twisting. My stomach lurching.
"Please."
"—Because, I thought you loved me too!"
Watery-hazel eyes met with mine, the distress and hope clinging onto his wild irises. He spoke in such a rush that I was interjecting every phrase but he never even noticed. My heart sunk to the floor, splattering metaphorically by my swollen feet.
"Just give me an answer, Six... because I cannot go on like this for any longer. Give me an answer."
His shoulders fell limp by his sides and his lips became as rosy as his neck did too. With trembling hands reaching out to mine, I want to hold them but I can't—and the tears burst forth like water from a dam, spilling down my face.
"An answer to what?" I began to cry, shaking my head as if I couldn't stop it. "Please, Five..."
"Tell me you love me too." He said—demanded.
Silence. For so long, it was absolutely silent.
But then, as much as I tried to hold it in, the pain came out like an uproar from my throat in the form of a silent sob. The beads of water started falling down one after another, without a sign of stopping.
I shook my head, taking further steps back.
"I can't."
Five follows, hands gripping by his sides for he knows if he tried to hold me again I would tear out of his grip.
"Why not, Six? Why can't you just tell me that you love me!"
"Five, you were my best-friend and always will be one of the brightest parts of my life!" I tried, but he wouldn't even listen. I could feel the overwhelming stress vibrating off my chest, out my pores and sliding off my skin. I knew Five could sense it too—hell, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone upon Finalizer could feel my guilty and aching tension in the air.
"Then just—"
I cried and cut his words short just as he had done to me.
"I can't tell you that I love you, because I don't love you!" I explained, holding my shaking hands up to my temples and running them through my hair.
Silence returns, this time for longer. It was menacing as I tried to not look Five in the eyes.
"Why?"
I gulped.
"I-I don't know why I can't love you." I trembled and tried to make sense of it all. "And I can't see why it is that I don't... but I just know that I don't."
Voice low, eyes hurt. "You don't?"
"No." My voice wobbled, "I would be only lying to you if I said that I did. And... we always promised each other that we would never lie."
When Five cried there was a rawness to it, like the pain was still an open wound that had never had the chance to heal before. He refused to look away, even as his lips trembled and his shoulders heaved with emotion, unwilling to back down.
"I can't love anyone else, Six," He mumbled—suddenly becoming defensive, as if he didn't believe my words or wouldn't take it as an answer. "I only love you."
"Five, don't say that."
"Why can't you just—" He shook his head, trying to make sense of it all and figure out how to get what he truely wanted. He gulped, "Say yes and we could forget about all this violence and pain. Deep down you feel the same as I do. I—I know it."
I took a meek step back, my tears too, falling like showers. "I cant and I don't."
His dark eyelashes brimmed heavy with tears and his hands clenched into shaking fists, in a desperate battle against my refusal. "Why not?"
"Five..." I spoke low, my eyes begging for him to stop.
Another lone tear traced down his cheek, but this time that was only the first of many to come because after that, the floodgates opened. "We promised not to lie to each-other! So why can't you tell me that you love me?" He tried once more.
By now, the two of us were screaming in this empty hall, our cries only echoing and bouncing off the walls and surely down the halls too.
I bite the inside of my cheek and taste blood shorty after.
"I can't tell you why I can't say yes..."
He looks at me so broken, and I only continued, "—And I can't tell you truthfully as to why, so I won't tell you anything at all."
He wept, tears streaming from his deep hazel eyes as the loud, heaving sobs tearing from his throat, but still he did not look away.
"You love someone else?"
He knew.
Clenching my hands into fists so tightly, despite the fact that my palms were stinging and bleeding beneath my fingernails, I heave a desperate breath in, only to cry it out again.
He scoffed beneath the pain at my silence. "Who is it? Who could love you as much as I do?"
He has to know who, surely?
"You shouldn't love me, Five..." I began trying to ease the tension and motioned to my body, "Look at me, I'm not meant for—"
"I love you, Six."
"—The First Order would rather snap my neck than give me the chance to love!"
"I love you, Six."
"They will kill me! The Supreme Leader will kill me!"
"I love y—"
"And yet, that is still not enough for me to not listen to the threats or ignore the cruel destiny that will become of my future, whilst I follow it so tenderly!" I cried.
My eyes flew open when I realised what I had so vulnerably said.
Five stopped his words.
His shoulders fall even further than before. He had asked me moments ago, but he didn't believe it to be true then... now, he knows.
"So you do love someone else." It wasn't a question.
"Yes." I gave up, my shoulders dropping as low as his did.
"Who—" He began to ask again, but suddenly, the wide doors behind us opened.
Five stops speaking as if the words he could've possibly said were snatched from his throat entirely. The approaching footsteps have the harsh sound of clicking upon the bleached-tile below their combat boots. Each footfall is chaotically spaced from the last, no rhythm at all as they glided towards us. I didn't even need to hear the mechanical voice, nor the swaying of a metal lightsaber on his belt to know it was Kylo Ren who stalked behind me, for his presence of raging dominance was enough.
He glided down the marble floors like a slinking panther but tenser than a tiger who stalked his prey. Kylo Ren's feet thudded towards us and I didn't turn to face him as he roared beneath his mask.
"I've heard enough."
Five glanced up to the tall, cloaked man who stood behind me and for some sickening reason, my shoulders raised and a comforting feeling flooded my veins. Five could feel it too within me, and his eyes suddenly became harsh rather than sorrow, huffing a small chuckle and shaking his head as he looked to Kylo Ren and then back to me.
"Oh," He muttered, numbly. "I see now."
"Five..." I gasped, but I had nothing I could possibly say, for the truth was laid out the moment my tears halted when Kylo entered the Dining Hall.
Five had realised all too quickly, why I couldn't love him—and who was the one that instead, took his place in my heart.
Five completely ignored Kylo's presence in a nano-second, keeping his hazel eyes locked into mine.
"Why him, huh?"
"Don't do this now." I warned him, and Kylo began to take off his helmet, revealing an angry expression above the brown eyes.
"—Was I not evil enough?" Five spat, "Funny that you said I was the only one who changed, because I can't quite recall you having a thing for ruthless bastards!"
Five suddenly hit the wall beside us and screamed as the dent was punched into the tile... but his voice melted and crackled around the force choke that Kylo gave him.
His gloved hand was raised in the air beside my head as he began to walk forwards Five. He seethes, spit flicking past his tongue, but he says no words.
Burning rage hissed throughout his body like a deathly poison, screeching and demanding a release in the form of violence. Five is thrown against the wall, gasping for air as his face turns bright red as Kylo choked the life out of him without placing a single finger upon Five's flesh.
"Kylo!" I screamed, but he paid me no attention.
Kylo Ren hovered right there, quite soundless for so long, simply staring Five down with a dark stare. Five—though turning blue—gave the man choking him a smile and Kylo only clenches the air tighter, to which the smile is flickered away and replaced with frightened, wild eyes.
"Stop. You'll kill him!" I shrieked and took a weary step forward.
Kylo's head turns slightly in my direction. With a defined nose profile and a distant side eye, he muttered his only words once.
"Get away."
I flinched at his tone, but didn't have enough time to fully register them before suddenly, with just a flick of Five's hand, Kylo is sent flying over the dining tables, crashing into the stack of trays and chairs.
I gasped aloud and placed a protective hand over my stomach, taking four steps away from the violence.
"Five, no!" I pleaded for his sake, but it was too late.
Kylo's hands then curled into fists and I winced at the thought of him using them. His fingers unclasp from their home in his palms and he runs one hurriedly through his soft hair, before pulling himself together and getting back onto his feet with a horrific scowl.
His breathing then became almost rapid as if he was some animal and I saw the way his lip curled inward. He was seething in bitter anger, the darkness within him, taking over, as Five stood his ground also.
"Show us what you've got," Five had spat once the colour had returned to his face. "Let us see why you're Snoke's best pet."
All at once, fear flooded my system and adrenaline pricked my skin and beats in my heart like it's trying to escape. I think my chest will explode and my eyes are wide with fear. I want to stop them, but I know I cannot without the chance of hurting myself or the child within me.
All I could do was plead for them to stop, and even then, my words were useless—just like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Kylo Ren growled and his footsteps thrashed against the tiles with his long strides over to Five across the room. I watch with fearful eyes as his hand sneaks beneath the mess of black, exposing the metal weapon he pulls from it.
Lightsaber humming in the air and twirling as he ran to Five—the red glowing brighter than any lightbulb in the universe—I can see the anger in his eyes as he glared to his target with dangerous intentions.
"No," I screamed. Nobody listened.
Kylo eyed the weapon with a hungry gaze—the eyes of a passionless executioner. Inches away from Five, who had yet to flinch, his blunt hands were steady as they lifted the saber higher, ready to strike the boy.
I screamed even louder.
But all at once, the saber was defended by another red weapon: Five's lightsaber.
Purring and whirring in the air, I can feel the tension and hear the intensity in my bones. In that frozen second between their stand off and fighting, I see Five's eyes flick from me to him. Then he began groaning as he ducked beneath the strike and whirled around Kylo's back, who had already jolted away from Five's weapon which nearly pinched the tip of his nose.
Kylo Ren held his weapon evenly in his grip as if it weighed nothing heavier than a feather. A perfect, undaunted horizon; always levelled with his gait, unlike Five whose blood also vibrated beneath the lightsaber.
Five had stalled the apprentice's next strike, but watched as a wretched, stained grin split Kylo's lips when Five's weapon shivered under the brutality of his compelling strength.
With one swift strike, Five dodging it and falling to the floor, Kylo Ren merely stalked up to him, kicking the lightsaber in Five's hand to the side and staring down to him with malicious intentions.
"Kylo..." I warned, making slow steps over to the pair, but he didn't move.
Kylo stood on Five's extended hand heavily and Five struggled against him, shooting his right leg out to kick him but his movements were far too slow as Kylo twisted his boot upon the bones.
Five screams in agony, face scrunching up and fading crimson.
"Kylo, you won. You can stop now," I breathed coming up behind him because I know when it comes to a fight, for Kylo there is no honour, no code. All that matters to him, is the win and the satisfaction that the lifeless blood brings.
Behind the anger beating in his heart and pulsating through his veins and eardrums: Kylo Ren can't hear me.
"I am Snoke's main weapon for a reason," He throatily crooned, leaning down closer to Five's face. The panic settles in my bones and suddenly, I am a surging mass of adrenaline. The blade flashed red and as he brought it over his head, it hummed a low, swift tune when he brought it down.
"No!" I cried, throwing myself closer and grabbing onto the strong bicep that belonged to the arm which brought the saber down to Five below. Kylo growled an animalistic growl and when I stopped his force, he turned to me swiftly and in one quick motion, brought the lightsaber to my neck.
Stopping just before tearing the skin, the heat the lightsaber possessed almost burnt the skin of my neck that his lips once danced upon. My eyes blew wide and I could taste saliva thickening in my throat as beads of sweat trickled down my brow.
My eyes met his, the fear ever present. For a suspended moment, he pauses, registering what had just happened, and when his glaring eyes turned to mine, they softened—the brown clouding with so much pain and regret.
"Six," He whispered, suddenly calm and sorrow for Five to witness.
His lightsaber slowly retracted and I almost fainted when the hot blade isn't prickling the tiny hairs on my flesh. He stands impossibly still, shoulders hunching in as he loosely drops the dulled weapon by his side.
For a split second, the anger was suspended—the surprise protecting him until it shattered like glass all around us. I guess you could call it shock, but to me they're all the same thing for the first fraction of a second- an inability to compute, as the regret floods his veins.
Five spits on the floor and hobbles himself up, cradling a sore, broken hand to his chest.
"Do you see now, the monster within?" He barked, looking at me with a distant disgust, but I never met his eyes—only stared into the hurtful browns before me.
"He will become the death of you!"
"Five, leave," I spat and when he made no effort to move, I glared his way with dark eyes and a shouted for the first time ever at him in rage, "Now!"
Five's lips parted and he blinked away his disbelief, scoffing as he walked his way out of the Dining Hall. I knew this was the last moment of our complicated relationship, for it had broke as easily as Kylo's defences had in front of only me.
When it is only him and I left, my chin wobbled and I blinked away the tears that began to form. Turning on my heal and making my way out of the Dining Hall, Kylo followed me like a sad puppy.
"I'm sorry," He hesitantly said, swiping up his helmet and continuing to follow my lead.
I don't answer him, and he doesn't push it any further—not until we entered our quarters and I stormed my way to my bedroom, curling my hands around my stomach pathetically.
"You're sleeping in your room?" Kylo breathed as he leant against the hatch, his eyebrows furrowing in hurt.
He stood in the doorway of my dark bedroom, watching me as I peeled the thin bedsheet from the single mattress. Holding it suspended in the air, I glared straight forward out the window and closed my eyes tightly before meeting his gaze.
Every emotion is fleeting, every thought gives way to a new one. I can't even remain in one mindset, for I was a surging mess of denial. Five had caused so much violence and chaos, but by another's hand. Someone who could possess such brutality in their strength—the one who I loved so dearly. Five knew exactly what he was doing, for he had pushed Kylo to the limit to prove something.
The moment Five provoked a fight, he did it to prove that Kylo was the monster everyone thought he was—the monster who ripped away life and watched the souls drain from his victims blood.
And yet, still after all of this chaos, I didn't think of the man in the doorway to be a cruel monster. I still thought he was misunderstood, and that within that darkness was an incredible beacon of light shining towards me.
Kylo never ripped away my life. The First Order did. And although he wouldn't allow it or ever understand, Five now understood that I would only die by my own choice, not by Kylo's wrath.
Because, I would bleed myself dry for Kylo Ren if he asked me to.
"Just for tonight," I muttered and I felt all the sadness within me, cluster into a harsh lump inside my throat.
"I truely am sorry, Six." He says delicately—and I know that there were only so many times he has ever apologised before.
I walked to the doorway to hold those honey eyes between my hands. With my thumbs caressing trembling cheeks, I kissed his lips only once and nodded while pulling away.
"I know."