Hiraeth

A creature in a mask

Special thanks to my beta-reader Chridder (from A03) for helping me out with this.

Special thanks to Darkangel4066 (from AO3) for making this book cover for me.

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Yavin 4, known as a rebel base during the Galactic Civil War, was once a remote planet full of wildlife, but now few traces of it can be found. Even on a planet such as this, the thunderstorms can come out of nowhere when you least expect it.

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Rey is playing with a five-year-old girl named Mallie in one of the rooms in her family's residence on Yavin 4. She tries to focus on the activity with her force-sensitive niece in hopes of putting Mallie at ease, so that both of them could forget what happened a few days ago.That's easier said than done. Even now, Rey's is haunted by those moments... the moments when she discovered why Kylo Ren is considered the creature in the mask.

Rey is waiting patiently by the door leading to the communication room where her half-cousin Ken and her second half-cousin Ederlathh are engaged in a holo meeting with Leia Organa. After hours of an excruciating wait, Ken and Ederlathh exit the room, exhaustion etched in their faces.

"Bad news?", Rey asks, a knot forming in her stomach. She doesn't need a reply from them; their eyes offer the answer she seeks.

"We need to gather the rest of the family", Ken looks in her direction, offering a reassuring half-smile.

After Rey and the rest of her family gather in the main living room, Ken tells them about the solution Leia Organa has come up with: stall the First Order... through whatever means necessary.

Rey knew what that meant, of course, and the delicate position Ken was in. Her family needed to give one of their own as a bargaining chip, so if the First Order ever suspected them to be in the cahoots with the Resistance they could torture that poor soul or worse, turn him or her against the family.

This threat over their heads and the fact that Ken's project "Neutral Zone" will likely be controlled on some levels by the First Order helped Rey realize that when push came to shove, she would do anything to protect her family and Ken's dream.

Unfortunately the chain of bad news didn't end with just this. Ederlathh received a message, informing her of an upcoming visit from a representative of the First Order later in the evening.

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The weather that night wasn't kind either, full of thunder, bolts of lightining, and rain that soaked to the bone. Rey noted grimly that the planet seemed to know what dark cloud would soon be upon the poor family.

A cold shiver ran down her spine as the doors to the living room pushed open and a dark shadow entered. It was the dark side warrior, Kylo Ren.

Rey didn't expect to see him again so soon. She knows first hand what he it's capable of. She saw him six months ago when she was barely nineteen, killing his own father in cold blood and then hurting her friend, Finn, on Starkiller Base. Fortunately, she had a disguise back then, so Ren doesn't know she was the one who kicked his ass. As far as most are concerned, she's just a non-sensitive scavenger found 4 years ago by a privileged family.

"Lord Ren, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?", Ken's confident voice snapped Rey from her musings.

"Spare me the theatrics, Ken Kenobi", Ren replied with mechanical coldness."You know very well what you did. "