Encounter on Lothal (Kylo/OC)

Chapter 9

Tana woke the next morning with a scratchy throat and itchy eyes from the meltdown she'd had the night before. Ironically, she found she was wrapped up in Ren's cloak. She didn't understand how he could be so cruel to her on the one hand and so gentle on the other. Was he telling the truth, was it really a mistake? And did she care?

She rose from the cot and readied herself for the day – today was going to be their first day of excavation, and she wanted to be prepared for any injuries that might result from the work ahead.

Breakfast was served in the common area, the crew taking turns being "cook", and tomorrow would be Tana's turn. She left Kylo's cloak outside his tent and then sat down to eat her breakfast quietly, letting the men chat amongst themselves about drill bits and weapons, sabacc tourneys and the like. She busied herself with a field manual on triage, trying to brush up on some elements she'd had difficulty with on the exams.

She didn't see Ren, though. He never appeared for breakfast, and he must have slipped out with the crew when they headed out to the dig site. Neither did she see him at dinner that evening, and things remained uneventful the entire day, the team making only minor headway, so they said. They believed they'd located the exact locale based on coordinates in some ambiguous records and found a plaque in the dirt that resembled a symbol Ren had found in the archives.

The next morning, Tana rose early to prepare breakfast for the crew. The navigator informed her she'd need to deliver Ren's meal to him personally – just like he had himself the day before.

"Did he even come out at all yesterday?" she asked the sandy-haired crewman.

"Yeah, he led the team, just he like usually does. Otherwise, he's kept to himself."

When she'd fed the rest of the crew, Tana took a heaping plate of food to Kylo's tent flap and cleared her throat, unsure how else to get his attention since she couldn't knock.

"Come," he said from inside, his voice low.

Tana slipped through the entrance, anticipating a lavish setup. Instead, there were simply a few crates, a charging station, a folding chair and a cot.

"You can set it on the box and go," he said softly as he as he began dressing, pulling on his pants.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked tentatively.

"I'm fine, for a lowlife," he responded bitterly as he pulled his jacket over his well-muscled arms, refusing to look her in the eyes.

"Commander," she admonished him, tilting her head to the side and squinting at him.

"What?" he demanded of her. "You come to my room, I'm expecting a girl to have sex with, and you appear!" he shouted. "We were set up, Tana! Hux made sure the girl I was expecting would never make it, and you would come in her place!"

"That's not true!" she shouted, slamming his tray down on the crate. "I've known Hux since I was little, he'd never do anything like that!"

Kylo shook his head, sitting down to slip on his boots. "You're a fool," he muttered. "You may think you knew him but that was a long time ago, before he became an officer in the First Order. He's an under-handed, manipulative sneak and there's nothing but animosity between us."

Tana may not have known Armitage well and she may not have been a fan of his, but her family and the Hux's had been friends since before the fall of the Empire.

"You can't talk that way about him in front of me," she snarled as she walked away, leaving Kylo to stew in his tent.

For several days, the crew conducted excavation operations at the dig site and Tana was able to keep up with the minor quantity of bumps, bruises and injuries one normally sees on a mission of this type. Finally, they had cleared away a path to a span of rock face several meters long and just as high. There on the face was a portrait of three people in jewel-toned paints surrounded by gold circles as loth-wolves knelt at their feet.