CRUCIFY ME . ー k. ren, p. dameron; tlj [HIATUS]

iii: REY.

REY.

"Come now, Rey," Troia said, in a tone as silky as the white silt beneath their feet, "say you missed me."

Rey could hardly contain her rage. Before her stood the woman who had shattered her heart strove to crush every last shard of hope that remained. Before her stood the woman that symbolized everything she hated about the present state of the universe. Troia, in her eyes, was the most cruel and calculating female she'd ever come across—far worse than Kylo Ren. "Perhaps I loved you once...but you showed your true colors to me long ago, Rena."

Rena was the name her mother had given her when she was born, but when she joined the ranks of the First Order, she was forced to cut it short to the more disciplined-sounding Ren.

Crucify me. Those words passed through her system like an electric current, as they did every time she heard them, jolting her body every single time—it jolted her body more than the sound of her own name. But Rey thought nothing of it, for it just looked like Troia had gotten the chills. Troia didn't skip a beat. "That's not how you felt when I left you and mother on your own."

A cloud seemed to pass over Rey's eyes, softening her intense gaze with a layer of sorrow. Her mouth was slightly ajar, but no words came out of it for a few moments. Then, she managed to croak out, "Y-you knew my mother?"

Troia rolled her eyes, "Our mother, yes, I knew her. But you're too young to remember."

Despite the brief pause in their animalistic cat fight, the thing that they seemed to have most in common was the fact that stupor never had them in its clutches for long, for Rey quickly recovered. That answer came in the form of the activation of her lightsaber followed by a full-on head charge.

"How adorable," Troia mused as she activated her own lightsaber. Rey's strength caught her off guard—she had grossly underestimated the young jedi's abilities. It was a good thing her saber had handguards like Kylo's, otherwise Troia would already have lost her hand—maybe both, if she wasn't careful.

"This—" Rey yelled, swinging her lightsaber sideways and slashing open the skin on Troia's arm, earning a pained growl from the First Order General. "—is for leaving me when I needed you most! I was alone! Afraid!"

Troia was serious now, and she retaliated with an onslaught of attacks, overwhelming Rey but not incapacitating her completely. Troia's aggression only further fueled that of Rey. "Over-dependence sounds like a personal problem!"

"Fickleness is a personal problem, too, you rat!" Rey shouted back, hitting Troia in the chest with the butt of her lightsaber, causing her to stagger backwards a few feet. Troia decided that that moment was an excellent opportunity to attempt to disorient her opponent, and did so by swirling her cape forwards and over Rey's head, and then striking her in the stomach with the heel of her boot. Rey was on the ground now, her lightsaber having fallen out of her hand on impact, and was lying a couple feet away. Troia placed her foot on top of Rey's chest, applying pressure as she did so, and pointed the edge of her red saber at Rey's neck. Beads of sweat began to form on her skin due to the heat from the proximity of Troia's blade.

"You haven't changed a bit," Troia said, giving Rey a sharkish grin. "still forever helpless, no matter what you do."

Both women had become oblivious to what was going on around them; Troia herself had grown blind to the fact that three out of her four AT-ATs had been destroyed by enemy Resistance forces. The First Order was being beaten into the ground for the second time and Troia hadn't noticed because she was too caught up in her little bout with Rey. She also hadn't noticed, among other things, that an X-Wing had her in its sights and was preparing to fire. The person in that X-Wing was Poe Dameron—he'd crossed paths with Troia only once before and that one time was all it took for him to despise her with all he had. That was why when her figure was lined up in the crosshairs, he fired without hesitation. Troia turned her head to the side at the last minute and saw the look in his eyes—it was murderous. Decisive. Enraged. Perhaps even a little crazed. She only barely managed to raise her hand in time to put up a force field around herself as protection, otherwise that would most surely have been the end of General Troia Ren as the universe knew her.

"Damn it," Poe muttered, pulling up from the steep dive and making another firing round before once again setting his sights on Troia, who still had Rey underfoot. There was no way he could help Rey out without either killing Troia or taking out the last First Order AT-AT, both tasks of which were proving to be much more difficult than he (or anyone else) had originally anticipated. The trouble was that he couldn't kill Troia due to specific orders he'd just received from General Organa, instructing him to capture her alive instead. But with the AT-AT still in the picture, he would have to find some other way to distract her until that tank of a weapon was out of the way.

"Get that girl back to base alive, Dameron," General Organa had told him over his intercom a few moments ago, "I don't care how bad she is."

And yet, and yet, he still made his rounds on her. He still had her in his sights. And she still managed to fight off his attacks—for whatever reason, his hands were shaking.

"Ready when you are, Black Leader," another pilot said into his cap com, their voice crackly due to radio interference, "I'm in formation to capture the target."

Poe nodded, having Troia once again in his cross hairs. "So am I."

He shot, and missed. On purpose that time. "I'm sending Orion with a ground team to get her. In the meantime, keep firing at her. We can't have her on the loose with that lightsaber."

"Yes, sir."

The last of Troia's AT-ATs had been destroyed by then, and she was still very occupied with both Rey and the pilots that were shooting at her.

"For fuck's sake!" she yelled, as her lightsaber was knocked out of her hand and out of her reach by Rey, who now had the upper hand.

"You killed my friend!" Rey growled, pointing her own saber at Troia's neck. She was stalling. Troia hadn't killed any of her friends—or perhaps she had, but Rey couldn't name any—her gaze was focused on the ground team that was on the horizon, along with the gliders that accompanied them for the purpose of quick transport back to base.

"You'll have to be specific, darling," Troia replied, her voice raspy due to lack of air, "the sheer number of Resistance scum that have perished under my hand forbids me from remembering their dirty little faces."

At this, Rey narrowed her eyes. Troia always seemed to have some nasty comment readied in response to anything she said, and that only fueled her rage. "The only dirty-faced scum here is you."

The ground forces had stopped- they were but fifty feet away. A young man was running towards them now, blaster in hand. From a glance, Rey could tell he was packing major heat. It was a smart move on his part—Troia was dangerous, with or without her saber. She could drive a man to madness with just words, aside from her abilities as a powerful Force-user.

"Good work, Rey," the man told her, throwing her a jaunty salute, "I'll take things from here."

Rey simply nodded, since she didn't know his name. He held Troia at gunpoint until she was on her feet and walking in front of him towards the gliders, and even then, his blaster didn't budge from being pressed against her back. To her dismay, he steered her towards an X-Wing that had just landed, as opposed to one of the gliders; she hated X-Wings, they made her stomach churn and flop into her throat. As the hatch of the X-Wing flipped open, her jaw dropped to the floor when she saw who was piloting it.

Poe Dameron.