Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction ❯ "You're not alone... " ❯ The Monster ( Chapter 2 )

[ A - All Readers ]

 

A/N: Again I mention that there are SPOILERS in the story, because it would totally suck for me not to include it, but the way things happen isn’t exactly faithful to the film here, as I mentioned earlier, this is a mix of what transpired in The Last Jedi but also inspired in many theories I’ve come across the internet based on the Reylo fandom and whatnot.

Anyways, I’m a little bit busy these days because I started working, but I’ll try my best in keeping this updated. It won’t be a long fic, and honestly it’s something I wrote for my personal enjoyment, it was this insistence in my mind that I get this jotted down… .Anyways back to the story. Sorry.

 

Ch. 1

 

            It was happening again, the cold, and the fear engulfing her senses. Rey turned around and saw what she was expecting to see. Kylo Ren stood across from her again, he looked surprised again, but this time it was surprise he had expected.

He took a fighting stance, his hand ready to use the Force against her.

“-You will bring Luke Skywalker to me”- he stood there, expecting Rey to oblige to his attempt at mind controlling he. Startled and dumbfounded Rey simply stood there, also expecting her body to be paralyzed like it had been back on Takodana.

It wasn’t.

 

“-Monster!” she spat the words as if they disgusted her. She felt the anger boiling inside her like a mad creature.

 

“- It’s that look again, the one from the forest”- his voice was smooth, and his eyes held no hatred and no anger. She despised him for that, the way he seemed to dismiss the way she was feeling, for being such a cold beast, so heartless and dead inside. Kylo kept looking at her, wondering why she would bear such anger towards a person she barely knew.

 

“- Murderer! I found Luke Skywalker, and there is nothing you can do! We will bring you down!”- She kept lashing out at him. Somehow knowing that Rey would be training with Skywalker brought Kylo a spark of curiosity and interest. She would be an interesting opponent.

 

“-Did he tell you what happen?” again with the ease he spoke, the calmness. Rey could not handle her anger anymore.

-“I know all I need to know about you, you monster!”- she spat the words at him, and for the briefest moment she saw him flinch at her words. Rey had had enough of this, she willed him away.

 

“-I can’t see your surroundings. Can you see mine?”- he kept being so dismissive about the way she felt. She wanted him dead and he was asking about her surroundings. Kylo looked behind Rey.

 

“-Hey Rey, what’s that?”- it was Luke, with fear she turned around to find Luke pointing in Kylo’s direction. But he was gone, she was again in the island all by herself, with Luke inquiring about the hole she had previously blasted on her hut wall. He was gone, and once again she felt a brief moment of loneliness.

 

“-C’mon, I’ll teach you the ways of the Force now”- the old man made his way up the mountain, and Rey wondered how in the heck, this old man still had the physical condition to climb this mountains without breaking a sweat.

            Once they had made it to the top, Rey’s calves were on fire, her heart hammered on her chest like a racing pod. She was about to lay against a wall when Luke pointed a rock for her to sit down. It faced the ocean and its vastness, and once again she was faced with an unknown feeling of nostalgia that arose from somewhere unknown inside her mind. She carefully settled down on the rock and sat with her legs crossed in front of her, back straight and looking into the horizon. Luke closed his eyes and took a deep breath, it seemed that being here brought him many feelings she could not place into words. Trying to not feel overwhelmed by the previous feelings of anger Rey cleared her mind and only felt the breeze against her skin, blowing the anxiety away along with her fears.

 

“-Close your eyes and clear your mind-” Luke sounded far away, and Rey was doing just that, clearing her mind, she really wanted to learn the ways of the force, and if she wanted to do things right she needed her heart and her mind to be on the right place, she had to eliminate the space for hatred and for anger and for her thirst for vengeance. She needed to find peace, and now allow herself to be overwhelmed anymore.

 

“-Now reach out”- and she did. Extending her hand Rey tried to find something in front of her, not a physical thing, but maybe something intangible that she could define as the Force itself. And there it was, on her hand, a slight sensation, a tickling of sorts. Her heart overwhelmed with excitement she smiled to herself with her eyes closed.

 

-“I can feel it!”- There was no denying the excitement she was feeling, it was there, and she could feel it.

 

-“Oh really! You’re feeling it? That’s it? That’s the force?”- And then she felt her hand being slapped. She opened her eyes to see Luke looking down on her with a leaf on his hands. There had been no force, only Luke teasing her with that leaf. She frowned and felt as silly as a child. She mumbled between her teeth and looked ahead again.

 

-“You told me to reach out…”- Luke rolled his eyes.

 

-“Yes, but reach out with your feelings.”- As simple as that. Or so it seemed. Rey closed her eyes and allowed her mind to be engulfed by everything she was feeling. Anger, because of Kylo, peace because of her surroundings, sadness because of her abandonment, and happiness at newfound friendships, love, hate. It was all there, real, an invisible limb that she could extend, wings given to her that allowed her to soar into the skies. And she could see the island and everything else, she was one with the planet, with the island, she had become a part of the galaxy. Outside herself, Luke felt the power within her, he could sense her initial struggle, and he knew that she just overcome whatever had been tormenting her, he could see the way her semblance shifted. He knew she had made it, he knew she found the balance inside, and he could not help but feel pride in her, it was innate, even though he had barely accepted to teach her, every master cherished any growth in their pupils.

 

-“What do you see?”- He could not help himself. She smiled and with her eyes closed she took a deep breath.

 

-“I see the island, the sky, the earth, death and decay that feed new life, calm, violence, warmth, cold, I see light…”- everything was happening so fast, Rey was seeing it all, the most pleasant thing she had ever come across.

 

-“And between it all?”- Luke had closed his eyes as well.

Rey smiled.

 

“-Balance”- And then there it was. A pull towards something other than the peace and surroundings of her mental state, Rey frowned and swallowed. Luke opened his eyes, as if sensing whatever pull she had come across.

 

-“There’s something else”- she found herself drawn to the calling of something that reminded her of her loneliness. She frowned and allowed herself to be drawn to that. She could see herself being left behind as a child, she saw Unkar Plutt taking advantage of her necessity and hunger, she saw all the times she had to fight Teedo’s and crews for parts she had salvaged herself and at last she also saw Kylo Ren, his shape, back to her, his black cape blowing with the wind and the raspy breathing underneath that mask. It was darkness.

 

-“It’s cold… And It’s calling me”- Luke felt that slight fear stir inside.

 

-“That’s right Rey, with great light comes a great darkness”- He looked at her, the air around her changing to something he found himself unable to stop. Every pebble, every rock and grain of sand around her floated.

 

-“Fight it Rey! Do not go—” it was too late, it all happened so fast. Luke felt his body pushed away by the air around Rey, her body disappeared for brief seconds and he was left with a fear so deep he failed to see Rey materialize herself back.

She was breathing hard, the last thing she had seen before being pulled into an endless abyss beneath water was Kylo Ren, his black clothes fading into the endless obscurity of a cave, his red saber lighting the path, the anger within her sailing her every sense into motion and finally the fear of being alone once again, she did not deny darkness access, she could not.

 

-“What was that???”- she asked the question perfectly aware of the answer, she still needed to make sense of what had just happened. Luke’s eyes were struck with fear and anger and over all pity.

 

-“That place… It was trying to show me something”-she almost screamed the words, she heard her own voice sound faint, as if she was still somewhere away in the galaxy.

 

-“You went straight to it… You didn’t even try to fight it”- it wasn’t just a statement, it was an accusation, and before Rey could say anything else, the master Jedi turned his back to her and walked back the way they had come. Rey was left alone with her own thoughts to ponder upon. She held on to the rock she had been sitting in, allowing the chill in her now wet body to settle along with her raging thoughts.

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Kylo Ren had been on his quarters when he felt something inside his mind shake. A disturbance in the Force? No, something else, someone had been here, just for the briefest moment, but he had been with company. He thought about the small connection he had felt from the scavenger girl from Jakku, Rey, the one that left him branded and hence riculed. He’d had a long day, Hux had decided to show the Supreme Leader a plan to rid themselves of the Resistance fleet, and Kylo had been less than pleased to be present, Snoke had taken that opportunity to humiliate him, and he was in no mood to tolerate anyone. Lately the only thing keeping him distracted from his anger was physical exhaustion, and he was up just for that, training till he wore himself out. Kylo once again found himself caught in a tangle of emotions, it was being alone that brought back his father, his mother and the night back at Luke’s academy. Removing his heavy armory and clothing, he proceeded to wear something lighter in order to get more work done.

 

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It wasn’t the words he had said, it was the way he had said them. Rey didn’t feel it fair that she should be ashamed of her curiosity, of her willingness to open up for answers of questions that brewed inside her mind even before she had gotten here. Luke’s judgment had been clear, not only on his tone of voice, but also in the way he had looked at her.

 

-“You’ve completely sealed off the darkness…”- she had made her own accusation to him. And she had asked him for a reason, and he had told her about Ben Solo, about how the young boy then had turned against him and the Light and how he had murdered every youngling in the Academy, how he had chosen the Dark side. She was no Ben Solo, she surely would not turn to the Dark side, but she was not afraid of it, and the only thing she could give Luke was her word that she would not betray him, that she would not fail him. She stood under the rain while Chewbacca worked on the Millennium Falcon. Somehow the cold drops of rain soothed her soul, and she wondered how she had made it out sane from Jakku, where rain was nothing more than a myth. She smiled, allowing nature to wash off her negative thoughts, allowing the familiar peace within herself to envelop her. And there it was again. Her heart clenched in and her mind felt trapped. She knew it was him again, she could sense him and then there he was. Kylo stood face to face from her, right then and there, under the rain but not exactly.

 

-“Why is this happening? Why is the Force connecting us?”- he was the first to speak. Rey merely watched him. Kylo stood in front of a large window, staring down at the hangar of his fighter ships, lines of white armored troopers marching by. Rey could not see this, she was as oblivious of his surroundings as he was of hers.

 

-“I don’t know nor do I care, all I know is that I will destroy you.”- She didn’t exactly spit the words this time; her previous encounter with peace had eased her mind and soul.

 

-“Why do you hate me so much?”- Kylo asked genuinely. Rey frowned at the question, unable to find reason as to why he’d ask that, when the answer was obvious. But then again, was it?

 

-“Did he tell you what happened?”- Kylo smirked at the confusion in her face. She quickly changed her expression.

 

-“I don’t need to know what happened for me to know see as you are”- Kylo frowned and didn’t remove his eyes from hers.

 

-“He didn’t. You’re just blindly throwing your rage at me because you have nowhere else to direct it. Ask him what happened, and we shall see how you react upon that.”- it was he this time who ended the connection. Rey stood under the ship, dumfound and unable to breathe calmly. She needed some answers, not because he had buried doubt in her, but because they had been there all along, only she was afraid to birth them.