Across the Stars (Reylo fanfiction)

War and Peace

Rey landed her stead on the earth with a soft crumbling sound. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the buckle on the saddle belt. When she had loosed the leather from around her waist, she leapt off of the creature's back. The wy'vara bellowed and flapped its wings. The jedi dove to the ground on her stomach as the rearing animal caused a torrent of wind to surge above her. Within a minute, the beast was once again in the air and flying in the direction of the stable, cawing as it went. When its jet stream was out of range of knocking Rey out, she bounced up to her feet, flung off her cloak and ran in the direction of the hall.

Even from this distance, she could see that one of the hall's great doors lay sprawled across the landing and the other teetered on its bent hinges. She saw that the captain had already joined a squadron of Teleri who were dumping troughs of water and sacks of dirt on the blaze. Wounded and wheezing winged feast-goers fled out of the cracking and groaning structure – some through the doors and others out through holes in the ceiling. Glancing over as she sprinted, Rey saw Laegrtha directing the crowd to gather further down the hill. Coming to the battered hall entryway, heat leapt out at the jedi's skin. She breathed in, flaring her nostrils; and then slipped passed a group of Teleri in torn and scorched robes supporting a limping comrade between them. Once through the opening, her vision was immediately assaulted by curling grey smoke. "Bryt! Heul!" she called, her voice coming out like coarse sandpaper scraping along glass. She coughed and held the collar of her tunic over her mouth. Lifting it briefly as she navigated around fallen planks of wood and blazing thatch, she called into the haze again, "Chewie! Quoll!" She tried to feel her friends through the force, but her thoughts flipped over each other like out of control pod racers. Sweat leapt from all of her pores as she felt her face turning fierce red. Suddenly she tripped. On all fours, she whipped her head around and screamed as her wide eyes met those inset in the face of a Teleri's crumpled corpse. Scooting backwards, she made her way to where she approximated her companions had been seated. Then someone grabbed her shoulder. She turned to see the figure of the queen who was at present cradling a toddler-sized Teleri boy against her hip. His breaths were shallow and blood slid down from his right temple. "Rey!" Khalinjahan rasped. "We must go! Now!"

A lump rose in the jedi's throat and she gripped the queen's hand. "Where are my friends?!" she half-yelled, half-pleaded. Then coughing seized her lungs.

Khalinjahan flashed her fangs, "There is no one else alive here! Hurry!"

Then a snapping and a popping and a rumble echoed above them. Rey felt soft feathers engulf her and as if from somewhere far away heard the queen command her to duck. Barely thinking, Rey closed her eyes and lifted her hands as she bobbed down. Sweat slid along the bridge of her nose and she gritted her teeth. Opening her eyes again, she saw the Teleri's wing shielding her as the three of them huddled together on the ground. Looking up, she gulped at the size of the chunk of ceiling rafters and heavy straw suspended in mid-air three feet from their heads. Breathing in, she pushed her hands to the side and dropped the crushing load away from their skulls.

"Well done, Jedi!" With her tail, the Teleri ruler clapped Rey on the back and then pushed her forward. "Now move!"

Staring at the pile of building materials that could have so swiftly squashed them, Rey swallowed. Smoke stung her eyes as moisture leapt across her vision. Unseeing she followed the queen back out the door. As they ran down the hill, tears slipped down Rey's face, streaking paths in the soot smudging her skin.

Just then a group of Teleri crowded around them and started speaking rapidly in their own tongue. Rey barely registered as Khalinjahan passed the boy in her arms to one of them and began responding to her assorted subjects. The jedi thought only of her friends' faces as she pushed her way out of the crowd and walked away from the other lifeforms. Suddenly, coughing once again gripped her respiratory muscles. She bent over and collapsed on the ground. Then a different electric shock-like pain ripped through her side. "It's all your fault," an ice-edged voice hissed around her. Somewhere in the back of her mind registered that it was somehow familiar. When the spasming in her lungs ceased, she turned and saw the figure of Luke Skywalker standing about two metres away from her with the top half of his face hidden beneath the hood of his robe. A shadowy mist rippled around him. "If you had been watching over your friends like a real jedi instead of running around on your own selfish side quest you could have stopped all of this."

She stared at him, mouth hanging open. Thoughts raced and jostled for position in her head but she couldn't latch onto any of them. He sneered. "You never should have left Jakku." With that he lifted back the fabric obscuring his face. Rey gasped as she saw that her former teacher's irises spun with yellow tongues of fire, which bled out and swirled around him. As the crackling inferno draped around him it left him inexplicably un-scorched. Cackling with a bellowing laugh that shook the earth beneath her, he stretched out his metal hand. She screamed as the blazing threads shot out from him and lapped towards her -- their encroaching tips shimmering into the form of bobbing snake heads. "Scavenger," Luke said, though his voice morphed and now sizzled with the rasping drawl of Supreme Leader Snoke. Memories of the pain the former galactic dictator had pulsed through her in the throne room flashed before her eyes just as the flames were about to reach her toes. Then the figure of Skywalker and his serpentine fury burst into ashes as someone charged straight through him.

Rey blinked. The pain in her side throbbed down to a dull ache. The space where Luke had been was now nothing but air. As she processed what she had seen, she was grabbed to her feet and engulfed in a furry embrace. "Chewie!" she yelled, gripping him tight as tears flew down her cheeks. She buried her face in his chest. As she stepped back, she still held on to him. "You're alive!" The jedi laughed as she wiped her face with the linen wrapping around one of her wrists.

Chewie hugged her again, and then clapped her on the back. "Of course I am," he arrro-ed in Shyriiwook, "it'll take more than a little explosion to silence this old wookie."

She giggled again, before her smile slipped away. "And," she swallowed, "the ... the others?"

His bushy brows knit together, "Quoll is at the medical station. But ..." a glistening tear slipped down one of his fluffy cheeks, "they took the little ones."

"Bryt and Heul?" Rey frowned, "Chewie, what do you mean? Who took them?"

"I couldn't protect them, I failed you, Rey. I'm so, so sorry." He released a howl that chilled her bones.

She gripped his forearm. "Tell me everything."

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