Let the Light In

Chapter 4: Fated

Chapter 4: Fated

When Rey saw the Millennium Falcon's cockpit again, it was through blurry eyes and Chewie's arms.

Her chest was heaving, and with every breath she gave an audible cry.

The Wookie had pulled her to his chest, and had her enveloped in a warm embrace, rocking her back and forth.

But the night terror persisted still.

Rey found herself clinging to Chewie's hair, appreciating the comfort he provided, but dismayed that it was doing nothing to calm her, and chase the dreadful imaginings away.

The nightmare was not unlike the vision she experienced on Takodana. No, that was no nightmare. It was far, far worse. Only this time, when Kylo Ren had killed the other man, he had proceeded to advance on her. And she had been unable to stop him from running her through again, and again, with that jagged saber.

He didn't stop till he was kneeling over her, and her hands were wrapped around his mask.

This time, he did not remove it when she asked. Instead, he had picked her broken form up and carried her away from the sodden battlefield, into a courtyard where many still bodies lay.

Such tiny, tiny bodies.

But Kylo Ren carried on walking.

He moved through the littered enclosure, through an arch, and onto almost-white sand with Rey still in his arms. Rey did not know this place. At first, she thought it to be Jakku, but then she saw the ocean.

Kylo Ren waded into the shallows of a crystal clear pool with her, and as he gently dipped her body beneath the cool water, Rey's pain had ebbed away. He clutched her body to his then, holding her desperately close, and Rey curled her fingers around the latches of his helmet once more.

This time, he let her remove it.

The face underneath was not the Kylo Ren she had already met. The face was younger, more innocent, but still undoubtedly him. And so terribly scared.

He released her, and instead of drifting or sinking as she expected, Rey landed on soft sand, utterly unharmed. The ocean was gone.

The boy, however, collapsed. Rey watched Kylo in alarm, feeling the slightest of uncanny concern for him. His face was twisted into a pained grimace, but his lips were smiling. Kylo Ren clutched at his upper body, squeezing hard against his upper left chest, and tried to get up. He fell again, and Rey scrambled to help him, compelled beyond her understanding. She could not move. The sand just kept shifting, and she kept tumbling to meet it.

Kylo reached out for her, sprawled helplessly on the dune. The sand around his body bled red.

Rey stretched her arm out from where she lay, coming within millimetres of Kylo's fingertips, before his eyes locked with hers in one last, frenzied plea, and the crimson sands swallowed him.

Rey was left alone, clawing at the blood soaked desert.

Abruptly, searing pain sped over her chest in the same place Kylo had been clutching, and her whole body screamed with the phantom agony of sliced nerves.

As Rey had writhed, she found that pull as she might, her left leg would not move; it was sunken in the desert silt. Then it was her right arm, then her other two limbs, and then the discoloured sand overwhelmed her as it had Kylo Ren.

It was everywhere.

In her hair, in her ears, in her eyes, in her nose.

She could taste the blood in her mouth.