[ video ]

[sensitively]

[ The image that appears to the network is that of a young woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, a slightly confused but nevertheless determined expression on her features.

She's just woken up not too long ago on the back of a giant turtle. There's an adjustment period. ]


I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about it, but I've been informed by our hosts here that we're required to work for our keep and pay for our own needs [ food, must have food, her life has been doled out in quarter-portions for so long ], so I wanted to offer my services to anyone looking for hire.

I'm a mechanic first and foremost; my experience is with engineering and navigation of starships, but I can apply what I know to virtually almost any kind of mode of transportation — speeders, bikes, any kind of propulsion craft. I'm fairly good with my hands and am capable of building entirely with scrap. I have no preference what type of setting or location the work itself might be in; I'm very flexible. So if there is a need for it, I would appreciate hearing back about any interest.

[ the barest of pauses, and then: ] My name's Rey.

Comments

[no_light]

[She doesn't need to say it for him to read it between the lines.

And true to form, the anger boils up, nearly overflowing. His hands tighten around the edge of the console, making the material creak with stress.

How dare she speak of him as if she knew him, and had any right to mourn for him? As if she could claim this loss and make it hers just on virtue of having known him for the blink of an eye.]

I should have killed all three of you! [A snarl now, nearly feral. If she were in front of him, he knows he would be attacking already, and not even care if throwing himself into battle in mad fury leads to an end as bad as the last time.] Next time, scavenger, I won't hesitate next time.

I promise you, you're going to die at my hands.

[sensitively]

[ She can't feel him through the Force right now — and in an odd, strange way she wishes she could, feel that simmering rage and boiling anger like it's her own, like she'd felt on Starkiller — but she can see the effect her words have on him.

Good. ]

I'm not going to die. At your hands, at least.

If you fight me again, you know what's going to happen, don't you. [ Her voice shakes with indignation of her own. ] I'll give you another scar to match the first one.

[no_light]

[He, on the other hand, has no excuse for not sensing her so close, except that he has closed himself off and shielded himself as tightly as his skills permit, for he has no wish for any other Force users - all Jedi, all enemies as far as he has seen - to discover his sanctuary in the Midnight Hotel. Kenobi might have spoken of peace, but you didn't survive on the Dark Side being a trusting fool.

How much it will irritate him, to realize how close she was while at her most vulnerable.]

Maybe I'll give you one to match mine... [His face twists into a cruel smile that is more of a sneer.] Or should I say one like your traitor friend's? Tell me, did he survive? Or did he bleed out in the snow like he deserved?

[sensitively]

[ He will never know just how close he came to actually enacting any sort of vengeance, while she's unsuspecting like this. /plays world's tiniest violin for him.

His sneer and his suggestion only give cause for her to grow more confident — but when he brings up Finn and how he'd injured him, she flips back into anger just as suddenly. ]

He survived. He lives. [ She'd seen to it that it had been so, before she'd left to go to Luke Skywalker, before she'd found herself waking up on the back of a gigantic turtle...island...thing. ] And with you being here, you will never have the opportunity to touch him again. I'll see to that personally.

[ She tilts her head into the feed, the flashing of her eyes and trembling of her lips the only indicators that she's livid with fury. ] Why don't you tell me where you are, if you're so confident you can mark me the way I've done you?

[no_light]

[Ah, and there is the anger, it is beautiful to behold. Kylo Ren smiles in triumph, and that in turns calm him. He's in control of this again.

She could still be brought to fall, he is certain of it, only he has lost interest in sparing her life. The humiliation of his defeat burns too bright, and he might have once lectured Poe Dameron for letting himself be driven by the desire for vengeance, but... Just because he was once taught better doesn't mean he is free of that vice.]

All in due time, scavenger. You don't get to choose the time and place of our next duel.

[His cruel smile died, replaced by the snarl again.]

I think I'd like to see you suffer before I kill you. You deserve to feel despair, and know all your dreams have been crushed. Maybe I'll make you face the darkness within you first. You'll never be a Jedi. At best, you'll be... like me.

[sensitively]

[ Her anger ignites, burns, becomes a living thing in her chest — with it Rey feels a swell of power that might be mostly adrenaline, but bolsters her bravado all the same. ]

There's no darkness within me.

[ A blatant lie. She'd felt it humming briefly through her veins, singing through her head when she'd had him on the ground prone before her. It had goaded her on to finish him, and if the chasm in the ground hadn't opened up between them, effectively separating them, Rey wonders if she would have. ]

And I'll never be like you.

[no_light]

[Kylo takes a moment to savour the play of emotions of her face. How beautiful her rage is. He's always appreciated the destruction that people bring far more than the cold, impersonal destruction fired on a planet light years away. There is no poetry to that.]

You could burn worlds with that rage, scavenger. If you learned to use it... I would have taught you.

[He shrugs, as if he hadn't been burned by that very same rage on Starkiller already. As if his own rage and grief hadn't backfired on him there.

He uses what meagre experience he has with schooling a face always safely hidden behind a mask, to gentle his smile to something almost affectionate.] But you're right, Rey. You won't become like me. You already are.

[sensitively]

[ Deep down, she knows with some degree of shame that Kylo Ren is right. She's carrying far too much anger boiling and simmering underneath the surface, just under that veneer of hope that covers it like a smothering blanket and only lets the occasional spark of it sear through. Those years of loneliness and fighting tooth and nail to protect what's hers — measly scrap, but it was hers and she would claw eyes out to keep it and survive another day — will never leave her, no matter where she goes, no matter where the Falcon or the Finalizer or this turtle takes her.

Moisture pricks at her eyes, making them glisten over in her frustration no matter how Rey tries to hide it from him. She can't hide anything from him, she quickly realizes; even if he's not in her head he can read her like a holopad, notes and pages and details spread open for him to see.

The thing that Ren probably forgets though, about their connection, is that it goes both ways. She can't currently push into his head — but she remembers what she's seen there, before. ]

I'll never be like you — do you want to know why? I'm not afraid. I left all of my fear back on that dirty little planet that I scrounged a living off of. There's nothing here to that effect that can sway me.

And neither can you. [ the last part a bold lie, most likely; can he see through it? ]

[no_light]

[There's a heart-stopping glorious moment in which he thinks she might cry - and it's terrible to take delight in the prospect of tears, a low even for a man such as him, but there comes a point when the only thing that will soothe your pain is to see others suffer more. And just looking at her, alive and unscathed, brings back all the pain of that fateful day on Starkiller Base.

It may be low, even for him, but patricide puts smaller acts of horribleness into perspective.

But of course she has to lash out in turn, like she always has, and then it is him rearing back, clasping at his anger to keep from showing on his face how shaken he is.]

I'm not afraid either! [Lies, lies, lies, she has been in his head and this is why she needs to die the scavenger knows too much.] I don't fear you or... or not measuring up to him. You were wrong! I'm stronger than that.

[He should be able to see the lie, and maybe he will, once he can think again, but right now all he can see is her coming away from Starkiller fearless, while he has been reduced to nothing but his fears coming true.]

[sensitively]

That remains to be seen, whether you're afraid or not, doesn't it?

[ She knows what she saw before in his head, so whether he says he's overcome his fear of not measuring up to Darth Vader, she'll doubt it until she can see in his mind and know otherwise.

As it is, she's not done taunting him just yet. ] But you may as well face up to the fact that you will never be as powerful as you wish — not even after what you've done to Han.

[ A wild guess, really, on her part. She has no idea if the reason she'd beaten him in that forest was because of luck, of the strength of her anger and the fact that she'd tapped into some kind of source of power, of his injury — or, because of his emotional conflict regarding his father. ]

[no_light]

Don't speak of him! You've got not to right to spoke of him!

[ And there it went, whatever composure he might have been able to hold on to. But that was just too much. Her being here was already more than he could bear, her and her smugness, her very presence reminding him of his two greatest failures and as if that weren't enough... ]

He's not your father and now he will never be. [ He snarls at her, and if only she were here he would try to rip out her throat with bare hands, but alas... Only words now. ] He died at my hands, Rey, he died for me! [ He's breathing heavily now. ] And nobody cared enough to die for you. They just left you to die.

[sensitively]

[ ...Oh, how she hates him for saying that — all of it, every single word of it.

He has to know how she'd felt towards Han, even having only flown with his father for a brief, short time; he knows from having seen it in her head that she'd thought for a moment that she'd found the family she'd never had, in the crew of the Falcon.

Now she'll never have known if he might have been a father figure, to her; now she'll never know what it might have been like to fly with Han Solo, the smuggler, the hero, the legend.

Now there's nothing but cold, hard, unbridled fury in her voice, even as her eyes are full of pain. ]


He didn't die for you! You murdered him! He trusted you, he loved you, and you killed him in cold blood!

And when I find you, because I will, I'm going to do the same to you, I swear it to Hoth and Malachor and back.

[no_light]

Swear it, scavenger, swear it to whatever you want... promise me you will.

[ He bares his teeth at her, and the console gives another ominous creak as he grips the edges with all his strength. ]

I know how you felt for him. I know you loved him. He could have been a father to you. [ He barked a harsh laugh. ] And he must have loved you, too. You could have been the child he always wanted. The daughter who would continue his legacy. [ This time there is something conspiciously close to a sob in his laughter. ]

But he's dead now. I killed him. And nothing you do can bring him back.

[ His voice has grown choked up towards the end, and now he pushes himself away from the console, stalking somewhere off-screen. ]

[sensitively]

[ She bangs her fists angrily on her own console when Ren stalks away, her self-control at an all-time momentary low; it's just fortunate that her telekinetic strength through the Force is diminished, otherwise there would be more than minimal property damage.

Rey barely manages to switch the thing off, seething with her own fury to match his.

She's going to find him. She won't rest until she does. ]