Chapter Text
The ship is called Underworld, and Rey is going to blow it up in exactly five minutes.
It's a Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop, riding the tachyon streams of the Cerberus system nestled deep in Wild Space. From her vantage point, which is above, in the pilot seat of the Millennium Falcon, it resembles a bloated Gorsian dragonfly right down to the glossy red-gold hull and the delicate, tapered wings. With a length of 15.2 meters, it's dwarfed by the sail dragged along behind it on tense cables— a moon-wide veil of filmy copper-hued material, unfurled to catch the solar winds flowing from the nearby purple star of Nysa.
Once it has traveled beyond reach of that star's currents, the ship will retract its sail and fire up a built-in propulsion system of ultraviolet lasers— in theory, that is, because Rey will have blasted it to shreds long before that.
Four minutes.
A quick check with the Falcon's central computer assures her that all countermeasures are still in place. The freighter is too small for a cloaking device but the Carbanti package ticks away, jamming the enemy vessel's sensors. She's also using Force Immersion to spin a web of nothingness; anyone peering up from the Underworld's cabin will see only the glittering satellite-strewn wastes of this forsaken corner of the galaxy.
Three minutes.
Rey stands up and closes her eyes, gingerly prodding at the mental shields that she's learned to construct after months of practice. They hold, even as the bond laps and ripples against them like an inexorable Ahch-To tide, calling out to her and searching for the slightest crack through which it can pour to submerge her once more.
Two minutes.
She casts the net of her Force sensitivity into the void; it drapes over the Underworld and snags on the ship's fault lines. Holding her breath, she waits, fearing that such a move might not have gone undetected— but nothing. She's getting good at this.
One minute.
Her mind is clear as air and sharp as tempered steel when she surges the Force through the weak spots in the sloop's composition. Fault lines glow red amidst the darkness of her shut eyes, vibrating like plucked electromagnetic fields as she slowly, methodically slots power into place, gearing up to rip the enemy vessel apart with one devastating telekinetic blast.
Three... two...
Not so fast, Jedi.
Kriff.
Rey's eyes fly open as her shields disintegrate and the bond comes pulsing in. The dashboard is blinking with numerous alerts; all around her, the walls of the Falcon warp and creak.
Did you think you were the only one versed in the art of shatterpoint? sneers Kylo Ren. Did my foolish uncle not tell you how I broke a disc of Mandalorian iron when I was thirteen? He must have forgotten or he would not have sent you to assassinate me in such a manner.
She clenches her teeth but holds her peace. It's taking most of her focus to maintain her grasp on his ship— she can't shut him out again but neither will she give him the satisfaction of feeling her squirm as he inspects her mind at his leisure.
Luke Skywalker doesn't know. Kylo's delight is a brilliant and wicked thing, flaring through the bond. He has no idea that you've chased me halfway across the galaxy. Disobedience is a fine look on you, scavenger.
She lets a few seconds tick by in cold silence. This seems to annoy him, because he continues, with a hint of churlishness, Had enough of meditation and lifting pebbles I take it?
Had enough of you, she retorts.
And she pulls him in, lets him feel the lash of the rage that has been building up ever since his father fell to the white-smoke depths, the manner in which she has been slowly cracking apart with his constant presence inside her head; the absolute desperation that has driven her to this point. When he attempts to retreat she latches on like a sand burrower tunneling deep beneath the desert. She drowns him in all of it, in the same way that the bond drowns her.
Enough, Kylo snarls. Enough or I will tear your ship to pieces.
A tremor passes through the Falcon's hull like a warning shot, the duralloy plates clinking as they shift away from one another. Narrowing her eyes, Rey sends a tremor to run along the Underworld's fault lines as well. Want to make a race of it? she jeers.
Through their strange, repulsive connection she sees him more clearly than she wants to. He's standing in the center of a main cabin as ostentatious as the sloop's exterior, all done up in blazing swatches of gold and crimson, the transparisteel viewports like black velvet panels twinkling with thousands of silver stars. Dressed in full battle regalia, he has one long arm extended in front of him, gloved palm turned up to the ceiling. He mirrors her current position; her own palm faces down, in order for her to have a better hold on his ship.
It appears that we are at a stalemate, he dryly comments. I don't suppose that you would be amenable to us disengaging and going our separate, merry ways?
Get spaced, she snaps.
We're about to, unfortunately, he sighs. Might I suggest an alternative?
She waits. One of the many things that she has reluctantly learned about this man is that he likes the sound of his own voice. Stars, if the Resistance can just lock him in a room somewhere he'll probably end up detailing the First Order's master plan if they let him ramble on long enough.
We are near my private worldcraft, he continues. I propose that we put your new blade to the test, on solid ground. Let us settle this, once and for all, in the old-fashioned way.
I'm not going anywhere with you. She crooks her little finger; far below her the Underworld trembles.
An answering quake reverberates through the Falcon. The alarms shriek.
I see your mind, he hisses. I see your heart. You would bring about your own doom as well as mine, if it meant an end to the bond. Rather a waste for two to perish when only one need fall, don't you agree?
I feel everything you feel, she croaks. I dream your dreams. What if death is shared through the bond? To run my lightsaber through you might be to kill myself as well.
Then we die like warriors, he says brusquely, instead of choking on space dust.
When she doesn't reply, he persists with a hint of cruelty, You promised FN-2187 that the two of you will see each other again. Now that you've boxed yourself into a corner, don't you want to take whatever slim chance there is—
Without warning she plunges further into his head. He stiffens but does not resist as she echoes down his hallways and takes whatever she wants. While they've marginally improved at hiding things as the months passed, they can never outright lie to each other here.
Once she has satisfied herself that he's not springing a trap, she nods. All right. I accept.
She feels a slight tug at the corner of her still lips. Behind the mask, Kylo Ren is smiling.
*
A memory:
The first time she becomes aware of the bond is on Ahch-To, a week into her training with Luke. She is cross-legged in the ruins of the Jedi Temple, spine straight, shoulders squared, and hands folded in the standard meditation pose. She has been trying to center herself for days, with limited success. Jakku had been a flurry of activity— digging through scrap metal before the steelpeckers could attack, fighting off the more pernicious scavengers, fleeing from the fatal sun of high noon. A larger part of her than she cares to admit does not hold with staying put and spending hours focusing her mind on a sharp point. Only bones stay still in the desert.
This morning, though, something clicks into place behind her closed eyes as the salty breeze laps at her skin and the ocean waves roar in her ears. The Force flows through her like water on a wheel, spilling from head to toe. Her veins sing with it. She—
— is standing in the corner of some dark, windowless room. The air carries that stiff, unmistakeable life-support tang. She's on a ship. Why is she on a ship?
Why is Kylo Ren disrobing in front of her?
Rey swallows the gasp that builds in her throat. She freezes amidst the shadows, almost too afraid to breathe lest he hear— but, surely, the pounding of her heart is more than audible. Surely even people one star system over can register this rapid, slamming sound in the walls of her ribcage.
Kylo does not appear to notice her presence as he carelessly chucks his tunic to the floor, where it joins the black pool of his gloves and his hooded cloak. He's maskless, clad only in trousers and arm-guards, his pale skin a stark contrast to the midnight hue of leather and chain-mail. It is an odd intimacy to see him bare like this. She wants to squeeze her eyes shut but doesn't. She looks, and hates herself for looking.
Each arm-guard covers him from wrist to shoulder, ending where his clavicle begins. Her gaze is drawn, first, to this elegant line of bone, and then it wanders inexorably lower, to the smooth planes of his broad chest, to the taut muscles of his abdomen, to the sprinkling of dark hair that trails below his navel and disappears into the waistband of his trousers.
She is no stranger to shirtless men but none of them have been so finely sculpted. His trousers are slung low enough to reveal the sharp jut of his hipbones, tight enough to hint at what lies between his legs. She is suddenly unable to breathe for an entirely different reason.
He turns to the bed and the spell breaks.
The vast expanse of skin on his back is criss-crossed with scars. Some are old and ropy, while others look as fresh as if they might burst at any second. They look like whip-marks, they look like claw-marks, tearing his flesh in jagged lines of silver and red.
Rey can't control her gasp this time. It escapes from her lips and her eyes widen as she claps a palm over her mouth, a move that comes too late.
Kylo whirls around on battle-honed instincts, one hand automatically held up to Force-stun the intruder in place. She braces herself for the inevitable numbness, the paralysis, but— nothing happens.
"You aren't..." His brow creases. He lowers his arm. "You aren't really here."
She dislikes the way he's looking at her, his head cocked to one side and his dark gaze studious and intense, as if she's a puzzle that he's trying to figure out. She glares at him in response, watching that narrow, expressive face twitch as he arrives at some sort of conclusion.
"Get out of my head, scavenger," he demands.
"I don't—" Her voice cracks. She admonishes herself for that; it wouldn't do at all to lay her panic at his feet. When she speaks again, it is through gritted teeth and over a mutinous roil in her bloodstream. "I don't know how."
They stare at each other.
*
Rey taps in the coordinates that Kylo feeds through the bond. The Falcon moves in tandem with the Underworld beneath it, straining away from the pull of the star of Nysa. She's loathe to relinquish her grip and so is he. They circle within the bond like wary animals, holding each other's ship by their shatterpoints as they float through space.
Idly she wonders if this constitutes a kidnapping. Again.
He seems affronted. May I remind you that you tried to sneak up on me and kill me?
Because you killed Han.
He falls into a tense, brooding silence, and does not speak again for several long minutes.
Rey listens to the beep of sensors and the tick of chronometers in the sublight. Eventually, she becomes aware of the Falcon's A.I. humming and whirring in a jangle of discordant rhythms— a flaw that she ascribes to the cobbled-together nature of the central computer.
The Hanx-Wargel mainframe was rebuilt with three droid brains, Kylo tells her quietly. An R3-series astromech, a slicer, and a V-5 transport. They sometimes argue among themselves.
So this freighter has an identity crisis, she quips.
It's a mess, he gripes, point-blank. A heap of junk.
She coaxes open the door that his thoughts have summoned. A grizzled Wookie and a nine-year-old boy pore over a board flickering with holographic pieces, while a younger Han Solo talks to someone on the Chedak transceiver.
It hurts to see Han like this, vibrant and alive, grinning even as he cajoles, "Aww, c'mon, Your Worship, you can spare a few days. Tell you what, the kid and I are in-system now, we'll swing by and sweep you off your feet—"
An exasperated sigh crackles through the audio pickup. "Han," says Leia Organa.
No. This is not yours.
A bright, hot sear of anguish slices into Rey's temple, so vicious that she sees stars.
You already take my dreams, Kylo growls. I will not give you everything else.
It's bitterness, plain and simple, that causes her to spit out, You already have— kid.
*
Rey has heard of worldcraft before and thought them a myth like the Jedi. To see one loom beyond the Falcon's viewport tightens her throat with an exhilaration that is as unwelcome as it is inappropriate.
But who wouldn't be amazed? The habitation sphere is the size of a small planet, although not as perfectly circular. It resembles an asteroid, instead— rough-hewn and craggy, with a black surface crowned by the silver-blue mist of an atmosphere generated via force field, orbiting a miniature crimson sun held in place by tractor beams. The entire assemblage is a feat of engineering, a marvel of technology unique to the Imperial remnant.
"You people are mad," Rey says out loud. "Who the hell needs an artificial planet?"
This could have been yours, too. Had you joined me.
Not this again. It's a tired old subject— one that has been argued back and forth across several star systems. Rey projects her irritation, and, in her mind's eye, Kylo gives a languid, one-armed shrug of surrender.
The worldcraft's barriers shift aside to let sloop and freighter pass. Does this place have a name? she asks him.
Lethe, he replies, as they make planetfall.