Hunted

XVI. The News

It was becoming increasingly harder to get away from the Starkiller base for prolonged periods, and Kylo had taken to escaping just for half a day every week simply to have those few hours alone with Serela. Although he had told Supreme Leader Snoke he would have her convinced to come with him by his third trip that number had more than double now and he was no nearer to convincing her to leave Takodana. The plans for crushing the resistance and finding the remaining piece of the chart to Luke Skywalker had temporarily encompassed all conversations between him and the Supreme Leader, and so he told himself that if he was careful, he could continue to see her a little longer without anyone in the First Order being the wiser of it.

Of course this could not last for very long, and he wracked his brain day and night of ways to convince her that joining him and forsaking her home and family and upbringing to live amongst the Dark side was the right choice for her, but every plan he struggled feebly to come up with felt more ridiculous and doomed to fail than the next. Every time he would suggest it to her, usually after the lovemaking that preempted their conversations, when he thought she would be in the most obliging mood to agree to come away with him forever, but alas, she would never succumb.

Owing to her mother's presumed lack of outright support for their relationship, but at least acceptance of it, Kylo and Serela stayed together in the barn when he came for his visits. Her mother was hardly ignorant of why they wanted the privacy, but she always made sure to be far enough out of earshot when she saw the familiar black clothing pass by her window.

The biggest change though had occurred in her daughter: Serela seemed to emanate happiness, in a way she never had before. Of course, she had always been a happy girl, a child of the Light and all the goodness that exists in the galaxy, but this was something different. This was the happiness of love, of feeling secure and a permanent smile fixed upon your lips because every thought is of them.

Reha recognized it because she knew it well, it was the same way she had acted about Serela's father. A fact which made her very worried, as that had definitely not ended well. A visit here and there a couple times a month had turned into 6 months and then became only a few times a year. She dreaded the aftermath of her daughter's heartbreak if and when things ended disastrously with Kylo. He was a tortured soul, and while she had some sympathy for him, it was still not enough to want to sacrifice her daughter's health and happiness for the possibility of rehabilitating him. That could be someone else's job, not hers.

Serela seemed to see it different though, and for every time Kylo spent their visits trying to convince her to come with him to the base and join the Dark side once and for all, she would turn it back around on him, reminding him that the galaxy was a big place, and if he would finally return to the Light they could get far enough away to eventually be out of the First Order's domain.

It was during one of the longer periods Kylo was away the first time she suspected her condition. It had been 6 weeks since their first time together, and 2 weeks since his last visit. He had left reassuring her that this might be a more prolonged absence because he had some lengthy business to attend to, but that he would return as soon as possible to see her.

It had been one of the many mornings she laid in bed, awake and daydreaming about his next visit, when she felt the overpowering urge to vomit suddenly strike her. Bolting upright in bed, she dashed from the bedroom through the cottage and out into the yard, barely making it past the front door before she spilled the entire contents of her stomach, the remains of last nights dinner still not completely digested as it stared up at her from the ground.

Miserably, she began to walk back in, thinking that this was a fine time to get sick when Kylo could return to see her any day. Before she could make it back through the door though she felt the urge again, and turned to the right to retch directly into her mother's flower bed.