These Violent Delights

Chapter 45: The Hunt

WARNING: Physical assault (choking).

—

It was the tenth day of the Supreme Leader's hunt.

Standing on the balcony of the Canto Bight Resort, he glared out over the skyline of the city as the suns went down. This place felt familiar, but not in a welcoming way. In fact, the familiarity of it pained him, taunted him. He felt his left eye twitch beneath his mask. This place is still a fucking cesspool.

Kylo rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. It had been ten days, and he couldn't stop replaying that night in his mind. It was tormenting him, like an all-consuming recurrent nightmare he couldn't wake from. He should have known. He should have known that the security breach meant something, that it wasn't just a coincidence that a Resistance fighter found his way on the Finalizer earlier in the night. He should have known, when the First Order officer interrupted them the second time with news of six attacks, that he was a target at the celebration, too.

And he should have known that Kitten would leave him the first chance she got.

Kylo hunched forward, gripping the railing of the balcony to steady himself. Ten. Days. Ten days without hearing the sound of her voice. Without touching her. Ten days without simply seeing her face. And it was eating him fucking alive. The pursuit to find her had been a tireless one. After the attack on Coruscant and Kitten's escape, he withdrew all plans to delay the infiltration of the new Resistance base and had troops on the ground there within the hour. But they were all gone, as was their equipment. It was as if they'd never been there, as though the filthy scum had known they tracked them through lightspeed after the battle on Canto Bight, purposefully leading the Order to a false location.

It drove Kylo into a desperate spiral of madness. Bleeding profusely and concussed from the injuries sustained in the attack on the palace, he got in his ship and returned to the only other lead they had for the Resistance: an old base that the Order destroyed years ago. It was unlikely, but like he told Kitten, the Resistance was a weed—no matter how many times it was plucked from the dirt, it always found its way back, and he had hoped they were stupid enough to plant their seed in diseased soil.

Unfortunately, it seemed they weren't. He found nothing besides leveled buildings and a decrepit bunker filled with outdated, dusty equipment. It only took him an hour to search the entire place by himself. At that point, Kylo was nearly losing consciousness. In real-time, he shook his head, desperate to stop obsessing over his failures and setbacks since he lost her. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't escape it. He ravaged through the Inner Rim, the Expansion Region, the Outer Rim...any planet he could possibly set foot on, he visited. He tore villages apart like it was a sport, he and his knights interrogating any poor, unsuspecting soul that crossed their paths. If they resisted, he killed them. If they didn't have any information, he killed them. If he was in a merciful mood, he'd set their villages on fire. Usually, he comprised and did both, and in no particular order.

When he closed his eyes, the Supreme Leader could still hear their screams. He feasted on those screams. On their fear, their terror. Their pain. It was what kept him going. Something had to, now that she was gone. It wasn't sleep or food or basic human comforts that sustained him—no. He didn't have anything without her. Without her, he didn't want anything. He was driven by one thing and one thing alone: raging, explosive anger, demolishing everything in his path. Just like a rabid cur. But this time, he didn't want to prove Master Snoke wrong and regain his composure. He just wanted to find the girl he loved.

Kylo's breath hitched in his throat, his gloved fingers stiffening around the wrought iron of the balcony. He glanced at the sky, shoulders rigid and body tense. The suns reflected off him with a warm, fiery glow, painting his all-black attire a deep, bold orange. His robes rustled at his feet from the warm, gentle breeze. It was a beautiful evening, he could admit that much, but he didn't have to like it. Partygoers were just now arriving downtown Canto Bight, ready to drink and eat and fuck their way into oblivion. The casinos, the bars, and the clubs would be filled with people laughing, dancing, talking, and breathing. The thought of it made him sick. The thought of it made him livid. The thought of it reminded him of that night ten fucking days ago.

The Supreme Leader's eyes flitted closed as he tilted his chin back, the lump in his throat shifting as he swallowed. He felt himself slipping again. This loss of control pulled him in like a strong current, carrying him out to a sea filled with all of his mistakes that led up to this. Oftentimes he found himself there, stuck in a seemingly never fucking ending abyss of blinding rage and shame and defeat where he was forced to tread in the waters of his own wrongdoings, threatening to pull him under and drown out all other facets of his being. Cruel, unforgiving waters that mocked him for his failures, for every little thing that happened that night.

The way she looked in that dress. The way her cheeks burned when he told her he loved her. The brightness of her eyes when she saw the ballroom. Laughing, drinking, dancing. She seemed so happy with him. But then came their argument. She didn't understand. He did trust her, but he wasn't ready to let her go yet. He was afraid of losing her. Didn't she see that? All Kylo needed was time. But the Resistance strike took that away from him. As did the smoke from the fires, sitting atop his rib cage like an anvil.

After that first explosion, Kylo couldn't see or hear anything, so he followed the Force connection intertwined with the diamonds around her neck. He had placed it there earlier in the day at the hotel while she was in the bath. Just for protection, he told himself as he had watched the light reflect off the necklace, listening to Kitten splashing in the tub from the other room. He wished he didn't have to use it. But that connection was how he'd been trying to find her in her dreams every night since she left, and it's how he located her that night through the smoke and fire and chaos and the injured guests sprawled out across the floor. Through the debris and glass and blood, her necklace led him to her as she started climbing up the vibrocord.

He was still haunted by the sight of her hanging there, her fear, her pain and her conflict vibrating through him as if they were his own. It was still ripe on the tip of his tongue, and he hated the way it tasted. Kylo didn't mean to hurt or frighten her. He just wanted her to stay. He tried with all his strength. They all did. His knights surrounded him from behind, their Force signatures nearly suffocating him as they used every drop of power in their veins. But it wasn't enough. She left.

The Supreme Leader didn't even feel the impact as the ship jumped to lightspeed and sent him flying across the room. In fact, he didn't feel anything at all. Despite his injuries, he was numb when he stood up. He couldn't feel the blood oozing from his side or the pounding inside his skull. All he could feel was the absence of her. A loss he'd felt every second of the last ten excruciating days.

Crack.

Slowly, Kylo looked down at what had just caught his attention. He lifted his hands off the railing, sending a chunk of metal tumbling to the ground. He stepped back, just staring at it. It took him a moment to realize that he must have been applying too much pressure to the intricate, decorative fixture atop it and snapped part of it off. His lip twitched down. I fucking hate it here.

Turning around to leave the balcony, he abruptly stopped to clutch his side, hunching forward. "Fuck, fuck," he hissed, grimacing as he looked down. When he moved his gloves away from his tunic, he saw that he was bleeding again.

He grit his teeth and stormed through the sliding doors that led to the living area. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, he made his way into the refresher to get a towel. He knew he needed proper medical attention for his injuries; he wouldn't be able to find Kitten if he was fucking dead. But he had been taking shelter on the Night Buzzard with his knights, and they didn't have anything but bacta and bandages.

Kylo had tried to get his wounds tended to the night of the attack. After his desperate visit to the old Resistance base, he input the Finalizer's coordinates into his navigation system and switched on autopilot, only to find upon his arrival, the Star Destroyer no longer existed. It had been blown to smithereens, along with Hux and every other living thing on that ship. Bleeding to the point of delirium, he couldn't even hear Ibbot talking his ear off as he watched the debris float aimlessly around his TIE silencer. All he could focus on was the eerie, high-pitched frequency vibrating all around him, adding to the pressure already ringing in his ears from the blasts. Even then, through his foggy state of mind, it was at that moment that Kylo realized what he should have known all along.

Everything was connected. The whole time, everything had been connected. Decoying them to a false base. The inaction with the diseased crystal. Skywalker showing his face when he did. That nonsense about the fucking pendant belonging to Kitten. The pinged equipment on Hoth. All of it was a planned distraction to divert his attention to what they were really doing—planning a full-scale attack on the Supreme Leader and the First Order. And it worked meticulously well.

His fingers clenched around the towel. The Resistance fucking won.

It was infuriating. It was embarrassing. It was a disaster. And after this soul-crushing epiphany, Kylo almost gave up. He knew that if he ignored his wounds, he would eventually bleed out and die a quiet, peaceful death amongst the stars. A quieter death than he deserved, that's for sure. Because in the end, it didn't matter that he had tried to repair what his predecessors had done. Forever stuck in the shadow that the Sith's legacy of brutality cast, the entire galaxy would be happy if he was gone.

Nobody would miss him. Nobody would cry over him. Nobody would fucking care. He thought he had found the one person that would care if he was gone, but he was wrong. The temptation to let go was so irresistible, he was mere seconds away from letting his life end. But Kylo Ren was a stubborn man, even in the face of death. He knew that if he let himself succumb to his injuries, the Resistance and the last Jedi would win the war, not just the battle. In his absence, they'd take advantage of the Order's disarrayed state, attacking until they snuffed them out. The worst part? They'd do it with Kitten by their side. And he couldn't stomach the thought of that.

Blinking away the memory, Kylo swayed his head from side to side in the mirror. "No. No. I will find you," he muttered to the empty refresher, throwing the bloody towel on the ground. He tore through the door and stalked down the corridor, heading back to the balcony, but several hulking figures in his peripherals made him come to an abrupt halt.

All six of his knights were sprawled out comfortably on the furniture in the living area, with their weapons resting readily in their hands. He swallowed. The Supreme Leader was so caught up in his own misery, in that sea of fucking failures, that he didn't even notice his six, Force-sensitive knights—whose energy was so powerful, he could usually feel the thrum of it as it flowed through his veins—had entered his suit. His stomach dropped. I need to get it the fuck together.

They all bowed their heads to greet him. "Master Ren."

Kylo bit out a demand. "Report."

"No sign of her, Master Ren," came Vicrul's muffled voice through his helmet. "No sign of the Resistance either."

"Another false tip, then."

Ap'lek chimed in, giving a grim nod. "Unfortunately, sir."

Kylo's hands balled into fists by his side as he took tight, controlled steps to the balcony doors. He stopped, his gaze traveling the length of the city, watching the suns just disappear behind the city. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes, picturing all of the entitled, status-hungry people slinking around downtown, conversing and laughing and dancing with each other, enjoying life via their excessive indulgences. If Kitten were here, perhaps he could stomach being around such nauseating company if it made her happy. But she wasn't here. He had no idea where she was. Which meant that everything about Canto Bight fucking infuriated him.

He spun around, breezing past his knights and heading for the exit. "Burn it. Burn it to the ground."

They spoke in unison. "Yes, Master Ren."

Kylo's boots pounded across the floor as he passed through the doorway and into the corridor. His knights followed, and shortly after, the sound of marching Stormtrooper's armor clinking against one another filled the air. After leading them down the narrow, spiral staircase, Vicrul fell into sync with him.

"Master, I tracked the Korras, like you asked."

"And?"

"They are in the Tepasi system."

Kylo felt a spark of hope ignite in his chest. "Excellent."