Rey Skywalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatwaslucky) wrote2019-07-27 09:20 am
thatwaslucky) wrote2019-07-27 09:20 am
Starkiller Base- later Saturday
Rey woke with a start, slamming against restraints holding her in. She was disoriented, but found herself in an upright rig, staring straight at the man in the mask. He was sitting in front of her, like he'd been waiting for her to wake up. How long had she been out? How long had he been there?
"Where am I?" she asked, looking around the room the best she could. It wasn't exactly a cell, since there were no bars, but it felt like a cell. There wasn't much of anything that she could see that would give her any real information except that she was definitely a prisoner here.
"You're my guest," he answered, which wasn't really an answer at all.
"Where are the others?"
"You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends? You'll be relieved to hear that I have no idea." He paused, watching her. "You still want to kill me."
"That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," Rey shot back.
He stopped for a moment, and then reached up to unlatch and remove his mask before standing and dropping it to the floor. Under the mask was the face of just another ordinary person. She could have passed him in Niima Outpost and taken no notice of him. It took her a moment to shake off the shock of him doing that so casually, and she put her determined face back on.
"Tell me about the droid." His voice sounded much different without the mask. Clearer. Softer. She didn't know if that was how he really sounded or if he was trying to get her to let her guard down.
Rey chose to be difficult. "He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator-"
"He's carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A scavenger-"
Rey tried not to react, but she had no idea how he knew who she was, and she had to wonder what other information he might have pulled out of her. Apparently he hadn't gotten enough to understand that she hadn't had to convince BB-8 of anything. She hadn't even asked. He'd just done it.
"You know I can take whatever I want," he said, too casually.
Rey heard the implied threat, and she really was not comfortable with the way he moved close to her, his hand going up to her face like before. She recoiled, but had nowhere to go, and all she wanted was to keep him from getting into her head again.
He did it anyway.
"You're so lonely... so afraid to leave…" he said, almost thoughtfully, like he was studying her, and it was so much worse having any of this actually said. "At night, desperate to sleep... you imagine an ocean. I see it-- I see the island… And Han Solo. You feel like he's a father you never had. He would have disappointed you."
"Get out of my head," she said, teeth gritted.
He moved closer instead. "I know you've seen the map. It's in there... and now you'll give it to me. Don't be afraid. I feel it too."
"I'm not giving you anything."
"We'll see."
Where the strength came from, Rey didn't know. He stared into her eyes, trying to sift through her thoughts, and she could feel him doing it... until slammed up against a barrier. All she knew was that she wasn't letting him get anything else, and Kylo Ren began to look… uncertain. Uncomfortable. Good. She was doing something right, then. So she kept doing it.
Whatever it was.
And somehow, in her effort to push him back, she realized that she could see into his head. She probably should have been horrified, but that would have to wait until she could make him stop.
It was like being in a storm. There was more anger and hate than she felt prepared to deal with, not that she had any choice at the moment. He wanted to destroy things, destroy people. He wanted to humiliate everyone who had ever wronged him. There was something else besides that, underneath, too. There was a sadness, a deep loneliness… and a fear. Inadequacy.
"You… You're afraid," she said, reading his thoughts and watching her words register on his face, "that you will never be as strong as... Darth Vader!"
...Apparently those stories about Darth Vader had been real, too.
Kylo withdrew his hand like he'd been burned, his eyes wide. Not only had she managed to beat him at his own game, but she'd seriously rattled him. He didn't say another word, just turned to leave the cell as quickly as possible.
Alone in the chair, Rey took a couple minutes to calm herself, to not think about what had just happened, and consider her options. She was restrained, had no weapons, and there was an armed stormtrooper guard at the open door. At least there was only one. Still, she had no easy way out of this.
Jedi could do mind tricks. She also didn't know how they did them, but she also hadn't known how to fight off Kylo Ren and she'd done it, so it was worth a shot here, too. She said, "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
The stormtrooper paused, and stared at her. "What did you say?"
Okay, apparently that wasn't how you did a mind trick. Her confidence wavered, but she tried again, more forcefully this time, really trying to convince him. "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
He stepped next to her chair. "I'll tighten those restraints, scavenger scum!"
This wasn't working, and she could start worrying now. Instead, Rey steeled herself, and found something like calm. Maybe she didn't need to convince him. Maybe she had to show him he was already convinced. "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
There was a pause, and he said, "I will remove these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open." Casually, he reached to undo the restraints to free her.
Incredulous, Rey rubbed her sore wrist. She couldn't believe that it had worked, and that it had been relatively easy! "And you'll drop your weapon," she added hastily.
"And I'll drop my weapon," he said, and his blaster clattered to the floor.
Rey picked it up as she ran out of the cell.
She had no idea where she was going. She wasn't sure if she was on a ship, or a base, but either way, there had to be a ship she could steal. She skirted through the hallways, ducking stormtroopers when she found them, and finally found a hangar filled with TIEs, but there were too many stormtroopers between escape and her. Worse, she could hear more somewhere behind her.
She scurried onto the walkway towards the hangar and climbed down the side, her fingers disappearing from the edge just as the stormtroopers caught up to where she'd been. She caught sight of a service hatch not too far away, and began climbing towards it. This part honestly didn't scare her. She'd grown up scaling the interiors of giant ships, she'd done far scarier things. She just knew not to look down until she reached the hatch and disappeared inside.
She didn't stop until she felt it was safe to climb back out, and it was good to be running again instead of climbing. She just had to get to the hangar-
When she heard something behind her, she automatically swung around with her stolen blaster leveled at them, and yelped when she saw Finn, Han and Chewie standing there.
"Are you all right?" Han asked her.
"Yeah," she nodded. Relatively. She was relatively all right at this very moment in particular.
"What happened? Did he hurt you?" Finn asked.
She actually didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. "Finn, what are you doing here?"
"We came back for you."
Rey stared at him. That was all she'd ever wanted from anybody.
Chewie warbled an addition to that, and Finn asked, "What'd he say?"
"That it was your idea," Rey said, and pulled Finn into a hug, which he returned easily. Yeah, she loved him. Maybe not in a romantic way, but she wanted to keep him around forever and maybe hug him for that entire time. "Thank you."
"How did you get away?" he asked.
"I can't explain it," she said quietly, "and you wouldn't believe it."
"Escape now," Han suggested. "Hug later."
*****
They'd meant to escape. Then they'd gone outside, into the cold and snow, intending to get to the Falcon.
But a battle was happening above them. Starfighters were fighting it out and shooting at each other above the base in the fading light. It was unlike anything Rey had ever seen, and she still couldn't quite believe she was in the middle of this.
"They're in trouble. We can't leave," Han said, turning to the rest of the group. "My friend here brought a bag full of explosives. Let's use 'em."
And so the new plan was to split up, plant the detonators they had brought in certain spots around the base, and then meet up to go before it blew. Rey's job was to go with Finn and get the right door open, which she could do by yanking wires from the right panel. That was easy enough. Then it was just a matter of linking back up with Han and Chewie.
They didn't come out for a while, and the light that they were apparently counting on was dwindling to nothing. They had to leave before that happened. So when Finn and Rey got worried, they went back inside, finding themselves in the oscillator structure, accessible by climbing the structure to a hatch at the top.
Rey heard voices below. She peered over the railing, Finn joining her. The structure seemed to be all metal and scaffolding, with a long catwalk spanning the length of the room over a deep pit, and on that catwalk was Han.
With Kylo Ren.
The hatch allowed some light in so that it light the scene below, but no one paid attention to where it was coming from. It wasn't that they were speaking loudly, but their voices carried and echoed in the vast room so that she could hear them faintly if she really concentrated on listening. So Rey heard Han say, "Take off that mask. You don't need it."
"What do you think you'll see if I do?"
Han moved closer towards him. "The face of my son."
Rey realized she should have felt surprised; she hadn't known that. But she felt like she had. She pushed that thought out of her mind, her shoulders tense as she watched.
After a long moment, Kylo pulled off the mask and dropped it on the deck with a loud clang, showing his face. "Your son is gone," he said, his voice without the mask more… affected than it had been when he'd spoken to Rey. "He was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him."
"That's what Snoke wants you to believe. But it's not true. My son is alive," Han told him.
"No. The Supreme Leader is wise."
Han kept slowly walking closer to him. "Snoke is using you for your power. When he gets what he wants, he'll crush you. You know it's true."
It was hard to make out expressions from here, but something in the way Kylo paused said that he might know that was true. "It's too late."
"No, it's not. Leave here with me," Han pleaded. "Come home. We miss you."
Kylo strangely didn't argue. "I'm being pulled apart," he said finally. "I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"
"Yes. Anything."
Amazingly, Kylo pulled his lightsaber free, and Rey tensed again, expecting something terrible. But he seemed to be offering it to Han. Han could reach out and grab it from where he stood. The moment seemed to last forever.
And then the light from the hatch faded, sending the room into darkness again except for the emergency lights in the structure.
Rey felt her eyes already welling with tears, like she knew what she was about to witness, and she was helpless to do anything but hold her breath and hope she was wrong.
A moment later the crimson lightsaber lit up and extended, right through Han's chest and back.
All at once Rey heard Finn scream, and Chewie roar, and she was sure she'd probably done the same but she wasn't sure. Tears streaming down her face, she watched with blurry vision as Kylo pulled the lightsaber free, and let Han's body drop off the catwalk into the pit below.
From wherever he was below them, Chewie fired his bowcaster.
The shot hit Kylo in the side, and he fell to a knee. Stormtroopers that Rey hadn't even realized were there before began firing in the Wookiee's direction, and unthinkingly, Rey pulled out her blaster- Han's blaster- and began firing back at them through tears to stop them, Finn doing the same.
Then the explosions started rocking the base beneath them; apparently Chewie wasn't playing. Fire spread up the length of a giant wall.
And on the catwalk, Rey saw Kylo look up at them, seething with rage, and it was the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen in her entire life.
She felt Finn grab her and say, "We gotta go," and she let him pull her away.
They ran into the forest towards where Finn said the Falcon was, hoping that Chewie could get out and get there himself. They ran till Finn slowed, and Rey did the same, out of breath and relieved to stop, for all of about a second until she saw why.
Ahead of them stood Kylo Ren, lightsaber out and lit, only about thirty feet away from them.
"We're not done yet," he hissed.
"You're a monster!" Rey shot back. She wasn't as afraid as she was angry, though she was plenty of afraid, too. This being in front of her had kidnapped and tortured her and murdered her friend, and she loathed him.
"It's just us now. Han Solo can't save you."
Rey lifted her blaster and aimed at him, but he raised his hand and sent her flying high through the air and into a tree. She slammed against it hard and fell into the snow, dazed and hurt but not actually unconscious.
When she did at least start coming back to reality, she was laying on her side, and she could see Finn with Luke's lightsaber, squaring off against Kylo. Finn was doing well enough for himself, but he wasn't any real match for Kylo, who while Rey pulled herself her feet, finally landed a blow to Finn's back, leaving him unmoving in the snow.
Kylo was reaching for the lightsaber, and Rey acted mostly without thinking. She extended her hand and somehow wanted the lightsaber. The weapon was pulled from the snow and went whizzing past Kylo so fast that he had to duck back away from it.
Instead of his hand, the lightsaber came to Rey's.
She almost didn't know what to do in that moment. She'd never held a lightsaber. She'd only barely touched this one before and had resolved to never do that again, and here she was, because it came to her, because she'd asked for it.
Kylo Ren stared at her in shock, and even though it was the scariest thing she'd ever done, she ignited the blade, holding the lightsaber with both shaking hands.
Well. She was committed to this now. There wasn't any going back.
So she charged him first.
It was probably stupid, though it didn't feel stupid, either. Kylo Ren was bigger than her, far more practiced, stronger than her. She'd gone through forms a few times a year ago, but none of it was coming to mind now and she didn't know how to really apply it to a fight like this anyway, and she was used to fighting with a double-sided weapon, not a sword. Her form was more or less frantically swinging and hoping she hit something, though thankfully her blocks were good. She was very practiced at defending herself.
And yet, what she lacked in actual skill she made up for in ferociousness, and she actually seemed to be overpowering him at first, until the moment that she wasn't. He found his strength again, forcing her back further into the forest, until there was a rumbling beneath their feet and a chunk of the ground behind Rey's feet fell away, leaving her blocking his lightsaber at the edge of a brand new open chasm. He could push her over at any time, if he wanted.
To her surprise, he instead yelled, "You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!"
Well. She hadn't expected that.
"The Force," Rey repeated, thinking back to what Maz had said, things Kanan had said, things no one had said but she seemed to know anyway, and closed her eyes, trying to focus.
It must have only been a second but it felt like a lifetime, and when Rey struck, she forced him back, ducking under his arm to move away from the chasm. She moved to one-handed strikes now, pounding at him with the lightsaber with new confidence. He wasn't prepared for it. He fell back, and she followed. He blocked, and she used her own weapon and positioning to try and force his blade into the snow, which was probably something they didn't teach at Jedi school, or whatever it was.
And then she managed a lucky strike and hit the hilt of his lightsaber, sending it flying.
And then she managed a stab to his shoulder, not enough to do any real damage, but enough to hurt.
And then she landed a blow to his leg, bringing the saber up with a quick movement that slashed the blade across his face.
He fell to the ground, looking up at her, stunned and defeated.
One downward cut, and she could kill him. This could be over. And just as quickly as she had that thought, she recoiled from it. No, that wasn't the way.
The ground shook again, and another fissure opened, this time in front of Rey, separating her from Kylo by several meters. She didn't bother wasting time trying to get to him. He couldn't get to her, and Finn was on her side, and that was all she cared about.
She raced to her fallen friend, kneeling next to him. He was out, though she could feel his heartbeat, and while she could tell that the wound was cauterized she couldn't know how bad the damage really was. Not that it mattered anyway. The planet was falling apart around them, she didn't know where the Falcon was and couldn't get Finn to it by herself if she did. There were worse ways to go, she thought, and then changed her mind: this was a terrible way to go.
The forest suddenly filled with blue light, and Rey looked up to see the Falcon setting down in a nearby clearing just in time, and finally, something had gone right.
[Warning for some consensual mental stuff. NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Taken from The Force Awakens with bits from the novelization by James Luceno.]
"Where am I?" she asked, looking around the room the best she could. It wasn't exactly a cell, since there were no bars, but it felt like a cell. There wasn't much of anything that she could see that would give her any real information except that she was definitely a prisoner here.
"You're my guest," he answered, which wasn't really an answer at all.
"Where are the others?"
"You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends? You'll be relieved to hear that I have no idea." He paused, watching her. "You still want to kill me."
"That happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask," Rey shot back.
He stopped for a moment, and then reached up to unlatch and remove his mask before standing and dropping it to the floor. Under the mask was the face of just another ordinary person. She could have passed him in Niima Outpost and taken no notice of him. It took her a moment to shake off the shock of him doing that so casually, and she put her determined face back on.
"Tell me about the droid." His voice sounded much different without the mask. Clearer. Softer. She didn't know if that was how he really sounded or if he was trying to get her to let her guard down.
Rey chose to be difficult. "He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator-"
"He's carrying a section of a navigational chart. We have the rest, recovered from archives of the Empire. We need the last piece. And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A scavenger-"
Rey tried not to react, but she had no idea how he knew who she was, and she had to wonder what other information he might have pulled out of her. Apparently he hadn't gotten enough to understand that she hadn't had to convince BB-8 of anything. She hadn't even asked. He'd just done it.
"You know I can take whatever I want," he said, too casually.
Rey heard the implied threat, and she really was not comfortable with the way he moved close to her, his hand going up to her face like before. She recoiled, but had nowhere to go, and all she wanted was to keep him from getting into her head again.
He did it anyway.
"You're so lonely... so afraid to leave…" he said, almost thoughtfully, like he was studying her, and it was so much worse having any of this actually said. "At night, desperate to sleep... you imagine an ocean. I see it-- I see the island… And Han Solo. You feel like he's a father you never had. He would have disappointed you."
"Get out of my head," she said, teeth gritted.
He moved closer instead. "I know you've seen the map. It's in there... and now you'll give it to me. Don't be afraid. I feel it too."
"I'm not giving you anything."
"We'll see."
Where the strength came from, Rey didn't know. He stared into her eyes, trying to sift through her thoughts, and she could feel him doing it... until slammed up against a barrier. All she knew was that she wasn't letting him get anything else, and Kylo Ren began to look… uncertain. Uncomfortable. Good. She was doing something right, then. So she kept doing it.
Whatever it was.
And somehow, in her effort to push him back, she realized that she could see into his head. She probably should have been horrified, but that would have to wait until she could make him stop.
It was like being in a storm. There was more anger and hate than she felt prepared to deal with, not that she had any choice at the moment. He wanted to destroy things, destroy people. He wanted to humiliate everyone who had ever wronged him. There was something else besides that, underneath, too. There was a sadness, a deep loneliness… and a fear. Inadequacy.
"You… You're afraid," she said, reading his thoughts and watching her words register on his face, "that you will never be as strong as... Darth Vader!"
...Apparently those stories about Darth Vader had been real, too.
Kylo withdrew his hand like he'd been burned, his eyes wide. Not only had she managed to beat him at his own game, but she'd seriously rattled him. He didn't say another word, just turned to leave the cell as quickly as possible.
Alone in the chair, Rey took a couple minutes to calm herself, to not think about what had just happened, and consider her options. She was restrained, had no weapons, and there was an armed stormtrooper guard at the open door. At least there was only one. Still, she had no easy way out of this.
Jedi could do mind tricks. She also didn't know how they did them, but she also hadn't known how to fight off Kylo Ren and she'd done it, so it was worth a shot here, too. She said, "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
The stormtrooper paused, and stared at her. "What did you say?"
Okay, apparently that wasn't how you did a mind trick. Her confidence wavered, but she tried again, more forcefully this time, really trying to convince him. "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
He stepped next to her chair. "I'll tighten those restraints, scavenger scum!"
This wasn't working, and she could start worrying now. Instead, Rey steeled herself, and found something like calm. Maybe she didn't need to convince him. Maybe she had to show him he was already convinced. "You will remove these restraints, and leave this cell, with the door open."
There was a pause, and he said, "I will remove these restraints, and leave this cell with the door open." Casually, he reached to undo the restraints to free her.
Incredulous, Rey rubbed her sore wrist. She couldn't believe that it had worked, and that it had been relatively easy! "And you'll drop your weapon," she added hastily.
"And I'll drop my weapon," he said, and his blaster clattered to the floor.
Rey picked it up as she ran out of the cell.
She had no idea where she was going. She wasn't sure if she was on a ship, or a base, but either way, there had to be a ship she could steal. She skirted through the hallways, ducking stormtroopers when she found them, and finally found a hangar filled with TIEs, but there were too many stormtroopers between escape and her. Worse, she could hear more somewhere behind her.
She scurried onto the walkway towards the hangar and climbed down the side, her fingers disappearing from the edge just as the stormtroopers caught up to where she'd been. She caught sight of a service hatch not too far away, and began climbing towards it. This part honestly didn't scare her. She'd grown up scaling the interiors of giant ships, she'd done far scarier things. She just knew not to look down until she reached the hatch and disappeared inside.
She didn't stop until she felt it was safe to climb back out, and it was good to be running again instead of climbing. She just had to get to the hangar-
When she heard something behind her, she automatically swung around with her stolen blaster leveled at them, and yelped when she saw Finn, Han and Chewie standing there.
"Are you all right?" Han asked her.
"Yeah," she nodded. Relatively. She was relatively all right at this very moment in particular.
"What happened? Did he hurt you?" Finn asked.
She actually didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. "Finn, what are you doing here?"
"We came back for you."
Rey stared at him. That was all she'd ever wanted from anybody.
Chewie warbled an addition to that, and Finn asked, "What'd he say?"
"That it was your idea," Rey said, and pulled Finn into a hug, which he returned easily. Yeah, she loved him. Maybe not in a romantic way, but she wanted to keep him around forever and maybe hug him for that entire time. "Thank you."
"How did you get away?" he asked.
"I can't explain it," she said quietly, "and you wouldn't believe it."
"Escape now," Han suggested. "Hug later."
*****
They'd meant to escape. Then they'd gone outside, into the cold and snow, intending to get to the Falcon.
But a battle was happening above them. Starfighters were fighting it out and shooting at each other above the base in the fading light. It was unlike anything Rey had ever seen, and she still couldn't quite believe she was in the middle of this.
"They're in trouble. We can't leave," Han said, turning to the rest of the group. "My friend here brought a bag full of explosives. Let's use 'em."
And so the new plan was to split up, plant the detonators they had brought in certain spots around the base, and then meet up to go before it blew. Rey's job was to go with Finn and get the right door open, which she could do by yanking wires from the right panel. That was easy enough. Then it was just a matter of linking back up with Han and Chewie.
They didn't come out for a while, and the light that they were apparently counting on was dwindling to nothing. They had to leave before that happened. So when Finn and Rey got worried, they went back inside, finding themselves in the oscillator structure, accessible by climbing the structure to a hatch at the top.
Rey heard voices below. She peered over the railing, Finn joining her. The structure seemed to be all metal and scaffolding, with a long catwalk spanning the length of the room over a deep pit, and on that catwalk was Han.
With Kylo Ren.
The hatch allowed some light in so that it light the scene below, but no one paid attention to where it was coming from. It wasn't that they were speaking loudly, but their voices carried and echoed in the vast room so that she could hear them faintly if she really concentrated on listening. So Rey heard Han say, "Take off that mask. You don't need it."
"What do you think you'll see if I do?"
Han moved closer towards him. "The face of my son."
Rey realized she should have felt surprised; she hadn't known that. But she felt like she had. She pushed that thought out of her mind, her shoulders tense as she watched.
After a long moment, Kylo pulled off the mask and dropped it on the deck with a loud clang, showing his face. "Your son is gone," he said, his voice without the mask more… affected than it had been when he'd spoken to Rey. "He was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him."
"That's what Snoke wants you to believe. But it's not true. My son is alive," Han told him.
"No. The Supreme Leader is wise."
Han kept slowly walking closer to him. "Snoke is using you for your power. When he gets what he wants, he'll crush you. You know it's true."
It was hard to make out expressions from here, but something in the way Kylo paused said that he might know that was true. "It's too late."
"No, it's not. Leave here with me," Han pleaded. "Come home. We miss you."
Kylo strangely didn't argue. "I'm being pulled apart," he said finally. "I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"
"Yes. Anything."
Amazingly, Kylo pulled his lightsaber free, and Rey tensed again, expecting something terrible. But he seemed to be offering it to Han. Han could reach out and grab it from where he stood. The moment seemed to last forever.
And then the light from the hatch faded, sending the room into darkness again except for the emergency lights in the structure.
Rey felt her eyes already welling with tears, like she knew what she was about to witness, and she was helpless to do anything but hold her breath and hope she was wrong.
A moment later the crimson lightsaber lit up and extended, right through Han's chest and back.
All at once Rey heard Finn scream, and Chewie roar, and she was sure she'd probably done the same but she wasn't sure. Tears streaming down her face, she watched with blurry vision as Kylo pulled the lightsaber free, and let Han's body drop off the catwalk into the pit below.
From wherever he was below them, Chewie fired his bowcaster.
The shot hit Kylo in the side, and he fell to a knee. Stormtroopers that Rey hadn't even realized were there before began firing in the Wookiee's direction, and unthinkingly, Rey pulled out her blaster- Han's blaster- and began firing back at them through tears to stop them, Finn doing the same.
Then the explosions started rocking the base beneath them; apparently Chewie wasn't playing. Fire spread up the length of a giant wall.
And on the catwalk, Rey saw Kylo look up at them, seething with rage, and it was the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen in her entire life.
She felt Finn grab her and say, "We gotta go," and she let him pull her away.
They ran into the forest towards where Finn said the Falcon was, hoping that Chewie could get out and get there himself. They ran till Finn slowed, and Rey did the same, out of breath and relieved to stop, for all of about a second until she saw why.
Ahead of them stood Kylo Ren, lightsaber out and lit, only about thirty feet away from them.
"We're not done yet," he hissed.
"You're a monster!" Rey shot back. She wasn't as afraid as she was angry, though she was plenty of afraid, too. This being in front of her had kidnapped and tortured her and murdered her friend, and she loathed him.
"It's just us now. Han Solo can't save you."
Rey lifted her blaster and aimed at him, but he raised his hand and sent her flying high through the air and into a tree. She slammed against it hard and fell into the snow, dazed and hurt but not actually unconscious.
When she did at least start coming back to reality, she was laying on her side, and she could see Finn with Luke's lightsaber, squaring off against Kylo. Finn was doing well enough for himself, but he wasn't any real match for Kylo, who while Rey pulled herself her feet, finally landed a blow to Finn's back, leaving him unmoving in the snow.
Kylo was reaching for the lightsaber, and Rey acted mostly without thinking. She extended her hand and somehow wanted the lightsaber. The weapon was pulled from the snow and went whizzing past Kylo so fast that he had to duck back away from it.
Instead of his hand, the lightsaber came to Rey's.
She almost didn't know what to do in that moment. She'd never held a lightsaber. She'd only barely touched this one before and had resolved to never do that again, and here she was, because it came to her, because she'd asked for it.
Kylo Ren stared at her in shock, and even though it was the scariest thing she'd ever done, she ignited the blade, holding the lightsaber with both shaking hands.
Well. She was committed to this now. There wasn't any going back.
So she charged him first.
It was probably stupid, though it didn't feel stupid, either. Kylo Ren was bigger than her, far more practiced, stronger than her. She'd gone through forms a few times a year ago, but none of it was coming to mind now and she didn't know how to really apply it to a fight like this anyway, and she was used to fighting with a double-sided weapon, not a sword. Her form was more or less frantically swinging and hoping she hit something, though thankfully her blocks were good. She was very practiced at defending herself.
And yet, what she lacked in actual skill she made up for in ferociousness, and she actually seemed to be overpowering him at first, until the moment that she wasn't. He found his strength again, forcing her back further into the forest, until there was a rumbling beneath their feet and a chunk of the ground behind Rey's feet fell away, leaving her blocking his lightsaber at the edge of a brand new open chasm. He could push her over at any time, if he wanted.
To her surprise, he instead yelled, "You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!"
Well. She hadn't expected that.
"The Force," Rey repeated, thinking back to what Maz had said, things Kanan had said, things no one had said but she seemed to know anyway, and closed her eyes, trying to focus.
It must have only been a second but it felt like a lifetime, and when Rey struck, she forced him back, ducking under his arm to move away from the chasm. She moved to one-handed strikes now, pounding at him with the lightsaber with new confidence. He wasn't prepared for it. He fell back, and she followed. He blocked, and she used her own weapon and positioning to try and force his blade into the snow, which was probably something they didn't teach at Jedi school, or whatever it was.
And then she managed a lucky strike and hit the hilt of his lightsaber, sending it flying.
And then she managed a stab to his shoulder, not enough to do any real damage, but enough to hurt.
And then she landed a blow to his leg, bringing the saber up with a quick movement that slashed the blade across his face.
He fell to the ground, looking up at her, stunned and defeated.
One downward cut, and she could kill him. This could be over. And just as quickly as she had that thought, she recoiled from it. No, that wasn't the way.
The ground shook again, and another fissure opened, this time in front of Rey, separating her from Kylo by several meters. She didn't bother wasting time trying to get to him. He couldn't get to her, and Finn was on her side, and that was all she cared about.
She raced to her fallen friend, kneeling next to him. He was out, though she could feel his heartbeat, and while she could tell that the wound was cauterized she couldn't know how bad the damage really was. Not that it mattered anyway. The planet was falling apart around them, she didn't know where the Falcon was and couldn't get Finn to it by herself if she did. There were worse ways to go, she thought, and then changed her mind: this was a terrible way to go.
The forest suddenly filled with blue light, and Rey looked up to see the Falcon setting down in a nearby clearing just in time, and finally, something had gone right.
[Warning for some consensual mental stuff. NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Taken from The Force Awakens with bits from the novelization by James Luceno.]