Categories > Movies > Star Wars > The Resistance
Fire. She felt it scorching her arms. Her legs. Her heart. She felt leaves shrivel up and melt away. She felt the terror of small critters as they fled. She felt the smoke choking the life out of the peaceful, swampy, planet.
A yell, a loud guttural yell full of anguish. It reverberated through her head, shaking her from the inside out. A sting of pain rising in her chest. The sound, like claws slashing her heart.
And then she saw him.
Slithering flames of orange and red surrounded his large frame as he yelled, turning one way and then the next in a state of chaos, anger, and confusion, shooting the flames highers and further with every outward thrust of his hands.
The agonizing yell tormenting her mind was coming from him. His face was a primal red, scar pink and puckered, hair soaked with sweat dripping down his face, mingling with the angry tears that spilled out of his tortured, blood shot, eyes.
She felt it.
She felt everything. The rejection, fear, anger, loathing, frustration, hate.
The hate.
He’d searched for her. He hadn’t known what to say, how to make the chasm between them lessen, but he had searched for her, but the moment he had felt her mental signature leave, seen the the Falcon, a symbol of past rejection for him, leave, he’d erupted from within.
He scorched the earth as his anger fed the dark within him. She felt it. She felt it all as a fire torching her too. She knew he saw her face, another person he had loved abandon her, in every destructive flame. In every destroyed piece of forest. In every charred piece of life.
He was burning it down. All down.
“Rey!”
She threw her eyes open and tried clutching at her chest, but her body couldn’t move.
A familiar face hovered over her, eyes full of deep concern.
“Finn! Why, why can’t I move?” She looked around in panic, feeling the moisture on her eyelashes. Her heart was racing a mile a minute from what she had seen, what she had felt, what she was feeling.
He gently wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of his white tunic. “You’re on the Falcon. We had to stun you.” He cast his eyes down apologetically, “Sorry about that, but you should be able to move again soon.”
She was fighting back the turmoil bubbling inside of her as she processed what had happened.
“You kidnapped me?” Her brows furrowed, her toes and fingers tingling to life.
“We uh, we saved you.” He scratched the back of his head abashed. “Didn’t we?” He watched as pain streaked across her face before she struggled to sit up. He immediately slipped his hand behind her back, pulling her upright so she could sit up in the small bunk.
“No” She whispered, the word catching in her throat as her emotions threatened to escape. She closed her eyes, struggling to stay seated upright as she evened her breathing. She opened her eyes, turning slightly to face Finn, “We have to go back.”
“No can do” Poe stood in the doorway of the small crew lodging space Rey had been taken to rest off the stunner. He leaned against the one side of the doorway, his legs crossed. “We lost a life trying to save you and that ship, trying to get you back.” He uncrossed his arms and stood next to Finn, looming over Rey where she sat in a bottom bunk. “You tried. You failed. He’s lost. Now we need you back.” His voice was firm and full of a new found authority.
Rey shook her head, “No. No I wasn’t finished, I was so close. I, I just needed more time!” She was crying now, burying her face in her hands as it began hitting her more fully. He thought she’d abandoned him. He thought she’d left him. She’d felt it. His mind was made up. There was no question of his loyalties. There was no hope for him to join her in light. Now. Now he was truly lost to her.
“Look, the orders came from General Organa. She’d felt a disturbance. She feared for your life. We tracked the escape pod and are bringing you back to our base on Tatooine.” Poe looked to Finn for some sort of explanation, but he simply shrugged, just as confused by Reys reaction. Poe crouched down next to the bunk, placing a sympathetic had on Rey’s shoulder. “Listen, Hux is hunting Kylo Ren to secure his own power, we couldn’t let you be a casualty.” He got up slowly and left.
Finn took his place, crouching down next to Rey as she sobbed into her arms. He looked her over, she was littered with wounds and bruises. He’d never seen her like this. So vulnerable. She’d always been so strong, so sure. “Rey” His calm voice washed over her. “I don’t understand.”
Her sobs finally ceased and she began wiping at her eyes vehemently. She stared down at her battle scarred hands. Hands that had fought with him. Hands that had held him. Hands that had loved him. Hands that would kill him. “He’s lost.” All emotion had faded from her voice. “If we’re going to do this,” she said, now with firm resolution, “finish this tyranny once and for all, it has to be Hux and it has to be him. It’s the only way.”
*
He stared down at the eleven figures below him through the slits of his hardened, blood shot, eyes. Dressed in all black, an ebony cape attached at their shoulders, a helmet to mask individuality, each’s armor was equipped for the betterment of a certain skill; close quarter combat, long range sniping, technical sabotage, the list went on. They bowed before him, down on one knee, head lowered. Obedient.
The knights of Ren.
Sitting amongst the smoke, the floating embers, the charred remains, he’d called to them. The only loyal subjects he had left. After Snok’s death Ren had sent them away, suspecting his hold on the First Order would be weak. They’d hidden out, training and waiting, waiting for the call of their master. And when he called, they came. He’d stretched his mind out to their ship in the Outer Rim, calling them to him.
Former pupils of Luke, they’d been spared Rens wrath. He’d felt it in them, the obedience, the hate, the closeness they had to all that was dark in the force. With the Jedi temple in ruins, they’d bent the knee first to him, and then to Snok. To ensure obedience, they had had their identities stripped from them, their vocal chords severed, and they’d endured days upon end of forced physically demanding training. Now they were Rens own personal lethal army, equaling the force of a hundred stormtroopers.
He sat upon an elevated throne, hands clutching at the sides, staring down at his army. He slowly stood, releasing the cape from around his shoulders so it fell behind him into a pool of black on the seat. He locked it arms behind his back, clutching his forearms. The rest of his body stiff with tension. His voice reverberated and echoed off the chamber of the ship. “We. We were tools. We were tools of an empire. An empire that is now nothing but the skeletal remains of something that once was. We were the tools of a master who cared not. A master who wanted nothing more than power. A master without a vision.” He paced back and forth in front of the throne, looking down at the Knights. “I will admit, I too had no vision. I was clouded by power, by the simple need to rule our galaxy. But there can be more. This empire can be more than an army fighting against those that oppose it.”
He paused with recollection, recalling how his plan was made manifest among the embers of Dagobah, while the scorched earth still burnt beneath his feat, and the air choked what little breath he could muster in between screams of angry anguish. Recalling how the final straw had broken any resignation he had against the dark, had stopped his teetering mind and shoved him into the abysse of hatred.
When he closed his eyes, all he could see were hers.
He continued with renewed vigour, galvanized by his hate for those eyes. “The Jedi once held power. They stopped any attempt by the Sith take hold of power. We, we will return the Sith from the depths of this galaxies memories. We will restore the Sith to power. We will take control of the First Order. We will destroy all who stand in our way. We will hunt out and find all those powerful with the force. They will be ours. We will destroy any and all planet that oppose us. And we will turn this empire into a Sith empire!.”
The knights roared with agreement, beating their chest plates in rhythm.
Ren smirked down at them, reveling in their chant, reveling in all that would become. He had yet to have a true vision of the future. He was waiting. His mind was now made up, there was no conflict left around the red edges of his thoughts. The future should be clear.
He dismissed the knights of Ren with a flick of his wrist. They all stood in unison and left the chamber single file, each off to their own stations of work. They were in the midsts of intercepting communications from both the First Order and The Resistance.
Calmly Ren meandered around the chamber, running a contemplative hand through the locks of his dark hair. He had no vision, but he had a hope. Three armies would meet on one battlefield. The dark rising, and the light to meet it.
And the light?
Cut down.
He left the chamber, and headed towards the door of the ship, pressing the release button for the latch, waiting patiently for the ramp to lower. He walked down, staying beneath the cover of the ship, sheltering himself from the downpour of rain. Strong winds blew, whipping his clothes and hair in a frenzie, sending the ocean waves crashing up against the cliffs edge next to the ship. Residents of the island had fled his arrival, even the porgs remained out of sight, sensing the evil, and so it was only him and the elements, battering the small island as if to fight off his presence.
He wasn’t sure what led him to choose this place, this planet to rest, recuperate, and strategize on. Perhaps some masochistic desire to be close to those he had destroyed, those he would.
He took a few steps forward, closing his eyes as the icy rain, like shards of glass, struck him. He held out a hand, watching the water pool in his palm. He tilted his palm and the water trickled down to the ground, before he took another step out from under the ships shelter, rain soaking him instantly.
Folding his arms again behind his back, he let the wind pull him along the worn in paths of the small island, until he stood, clothes and hair dripping, in front of a grouping of hive-like stone structures. Torrents of rain coming down around him in a deluge.
Without a rage even needing to bubble up, without a war cry, without any pain or adrenaline to spur on his powers, to fuel the force within him, he calmly extended his hand and suddenly the stones of one structure flew outwards in an explosion of rock. Hovering like the scattered pieces of a disjointed puzzle, before he moved on to the next, the stones from the previous falling to the ground, shaking the earth beneath him.
The corners of his mouth twitched upward at the delight of destruction, at the ruin of any remnant that once belonged to an order he planned to wipe out. He would erase their memory.
He turned to the last standing structure.
But he stopped.
It felt different, he felt an energy, a memory, compelling him inside.
The half rotted wooden door flew out with the blink of his eye, splintering to pieces as he brought it crashing against the rubble of the now destroyed structures.
Lifting his foot her took a step in and was instantly struct with a barrage images. This place, the force living in between the stones, in the earth below his feet, was speaking to him. He knew why.
He looked around with contempt.
There was nothing of her left in the small stone structure, but it was as if he could almost smell her; smell the faint smell of ithorian roses. He took a seat on a small log positioned in front of an empty fire pit in the middle of the single room. Reb grimaced with angry contentment.
He wanted it. It was why he came here wasn’t it? The sting of memories, memories to fuel him, memories to spurn him.
He closed his eyes, rain trickling down the ends of his hair, streaming down his face.
She looked back at him with pleading, cheeks glistening from rain and sweat, firelight dancing across her pale skin. Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her hand from beneath the folds of a blanket, fingers twitching with reservation until she extended them too, reaching out for.
“Ben” Came a faint whisper.
He could feel her along the edges of his mind as she’d been called to him by the memories he now dug up, begging to be given admittance, begging to speak to him.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t let that happen.
His mind had already been made.
She was dead to him.
Her life would be his to take away.
He opened his eyes to find the structure in ruins around him, stones piled on top of the other in jagged piles, wind and rain once again assaulting him as he sat amidst the ruins of the past.
A yell, a loud guttural yell full of anguish. It reverberated through her head, shaking her from the inside out. A sting of pain rising in her chest. The sound, like claws slashing her heart.
And then she saw him.
Slithering flames of orange and red surrounded his large frame as he yelled, turning one way and then the next in a state of chaos, anger, and confusion, shooting the flames highers and further with every outward thrust of his hands.
The agonizing yell tormenting her mind was coming from him. His face was a primal red, scar pink and puckered, hair soaked with sweat dripping down his face, mingling with the angry tears that spilled out of his tortured, blood shot, eyes.
She felt it.
She felt everything. The rejection, fear, anger, loathing, frustration, hate.
The hate.
He’d searched for her. He hadn’t known what to say, how to make the chasm between them lessen, but he had searched for her, but the moment he had felt her mental signature leave, seen the the Falcon, a symbol of past rejection for him, leave, he’d erupted from within.
He scorched the earth as his anger fed the dark within him. She felt it. She felt it all as a fire torching her too. She knew he saw her face, another person he had loved abandon her, in every destructive flame. In every destroyed piece of forest. In every charred piece of life.
He was burning it down. All down.
“Rey!”
She threw her eyes open and tried clutching at her chest, but her body couldn’t move.
A familiar face hovered over her, eyes full of deep concern.
“Finn! Why, why can’t I move?” She looked around in panic, feeling the moisture on her eyelashes. Her heart was racing a mile a minute from what she had seen, what she had felt, what she was feeling.
He gently wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of his white tunic. “You’re on the Falcon. We had to stun you.” He cast his eyes down apologetically, “Sorry about that, but you should be able to move again soon.”
She was fighting back the turmoil bubbling inside of her as she processed what had happened.
“You kidnapped me?” Her brows furrowed, her toes and fingers tingling to life.
“We uh, we saved you.” He scratched the back of his head abashed. “Didn’t we?” He watched as pain streaked across her face before she struggled to sit up. He immediately slipped his hand behind her back, pulling her upright so she could sit up in the small bunk.
“No” She whispered, the word catching in her throat as her emotions threatened to escape. She closed her eyes, struggling to stay seated upright as she evened her breathing. She opened her eyes, turning slightly to face Finn, “We have to go back.”
“No can do” Poe stood in the doorway of the small crew lodging space Rey had been taken to rest off the stunner. He leaned against the one side of the doorway, his legs crossed. “We lost a life trying to save you and that ship, trying to get you back.” He uncrossed his arms and stood next to Finn, looming over Rey where she sat in a bottom bunk. “You tried. You failed. He’s lost. Now we need you back.” His voice was firm and full of a new found authority.
Rey shook her head, “No. No I wasn’t finished, I was so close. I, I just needed more time!” She was crying now, burying her face in her hands as it began hitting her more fully. He thought she’d abandoned him. He thought she’d left him. She’d felt it. His mind was made up. There was no question of his loyalties. There was no hope for him to join her in light. Now. Now he was truly lost to her.
“Look, the orders came from General Organa. She’d felt a disturbance. She feared for your life. We tracked the escape pod and are bringing you back to our base on Tatooine.” Poe looked to Finn for some sort of explanation, but he simply shrugged, just as confused by Reys reaction. Poe crouched down next to the bunk, placing a sympathetic had on Rey’s shoulder. “Listen, Hux is hunting Kylo Ren to secure his own power, we couldn’t let you be a casualty.” He got up slowly and left.
Finn took his place, crouching down next to Rey as she sobbed into her arms. He looked her over, she was littered with wounds and bruises. He’d never seen her like this. So vulnerable. She’d always been so strong, so sure. “Rey” His calm voice washed over her. “I don’t understand.”
Her sobs finally ceased and she began wiping at her eyes vehemently. She stared down at her battle scarred hands. Hands that had fought with him. Hands that had held him. Hands that had loved him. Hands that would kill him. “He’s lost.” All emotion had faded from her voice. “If we’re going to do this,” she said, now with firm resolution, “finish this tyranny once and for all, it has to be Hux and it has to be him. It’s the only way.”
*
He stared down at the eleven figures below him through the slits of his hardened, blood shot, eyes. Dressed in all black, an ebony cape attached at their shoulders, a helmet to mask individuality, each’s armor was equipped for the betterment of a certain skill; close quarter combat, long range sniping, technical sabotage, the list went on. They bowed before him, down on one knee, head lowered. Obedient.
The knights of Ren.
Sitting amongst the smoke, the floating embers, the charred remains, he’d called to them. The only loyal subjects he had left. After Snok’s death Ren had sent them away, suspecting his hold on the First Order would be weak. They’d hidden out, training and waiting, waiting for the call of their master. And when he called, they came. He’d stretched his mind out to their ship in the Outer Rim, calling them to him.
Former pupils of Luke, they’d been spared Rens wrath. He’d felt it in them, the obedience, the hate, the closeness they had to all that was dark in the force. With the Jedi temple in ruins, they’d bent the knee first to him, and then to Snok. To ensure obedience, they had had their identities stripped from them, their vocal chords severed, and they’d endured days upon end of forced physically demanding training. Now they were Rens own personal lethal army, equaling the force of a hundred stormtroopers.
He sat upon an elevated throne, hands clutching at the sides, staring down at his army. He slowly stood, releasing the cape from around his shoulders so it fell behind him into a pool of black on the seat. He locked it arms behind his back, clutching his forearms. The rest of his body stiff with tension. His voice reverberated and echoed off the chamber of the ship. “We. We were tools. We were tools of an empire. An empire that is now nothing but the skeletal remains of something that once was. We were the tools of a master who cared not. A master who wanted nothing more than power. A master without a vision.” He paced back and forth in front of the throne, looking down at the Knights. “I will admit, I too had no vision. I was clouded by power, by the simple need to rule our galaxy. But there can be more. This empire can be more than an army fighting against those that oppose it.”
He paused with recollection, recalling how his plan was made manifest among the embers of Dagobah, while the scorched earth still burnt beneath his feat, and the air choked what little breath he could muster in between screams of angry anguish. Recalling how the final straw had broken any resignation he had against the dark, had stopped his teetering mind and shoved him into the abysse of hatred.
When he closed his eyes, all he could see were hers.
He continued with renewed vigour, galvanized by his hate for those eyes. “The Jedi once held power. They stopped any attempt by the Sith take hold of power. We, we will return the Sith from the depths of this galaxies memories. We will restore the Sith to power. We will take control of the First Order. We will destroy all who stand in our way. We will hunt out and find all those powerful with the force. They will be ours. We will destroy any and all planet that oppose us. And we will turn this empire into a Sith empire!.”
The knights roared with agreement, beating their chest plates in rhythm.
Ren smirked down at them, reveling in their chant, reveling in all that would become. He had yet to have a true vision of the future. He was waiting. His mind was now made up, there was no conflict left around the red edges of his thoughts. The future should be clear.
He dismissed the knights of Ren with a flick of his wrist. They all stood in unison and left the chamber single file, each off to their own stations of work. They were in the midsts of intercepting communications from both the First Order and The Resistance.
Calmly Ren meandered around the chamber, running a contemplative hand through the locks of his dark hair. He had no vision, but he had a hope. Three armies would meet on one battlefield. The dark rising, and the light to meet it.
And the light?
Cut down.
He left the chamber, and headed towards the door of the ship, pressing the release button for the latch, waiting patiently for the ramp to lower. He walked down, staying beneath the cover of the ship, sheltering himself from the downpour of rain. Strong winds blew, whipping his clothes and hair in a frenzie, sending the ocean waves crashing up against the cliffs edge next to the ship. Residents of the island had fled his arrival, even the porgs remained out of sight, sensing the evil, and so it was only him and the elements, battering the small island as if to fight off his presence.
He wasn’t sure what led him to choose this place, this planet to rest, recuperate, and strategize on. Perhaps some masochistic desire to be close to those he had destroyed, those he would.
He took a few steps forward, closing his eyes as the icy rain, like shards of glass, struck him. He held out a hand, watching the water pool in his palm. He tilted his palm and the water trickled down to the ground, before he took another step out from under the ships shelter, rain soaking him instantly.
Folding his arms again behind his back, he let the wind pull him along the worn in paths of the small island, until he stood, clothes and hair dripping, in front of a grouping of hive-like stone structures. Torrents of rain coming down around him in a deluge.
Without a rage even needing to bubble up, without a war cry, without any pain or adrenaline to spur on his powers, to fuel the force within him, he calmly extended his hand and suddenly the stones of one structure flew outwards in an explosion of rock. Hovering like the scattered pieces of a disjointed puzzle, before he moved on to the next, the stones from the previous falling to the ground, shaking the earth beneath him.
The corners of his mouth twitched upward at the delight of destruction, at the ruin of any remnant that once belonged to an order he planned to wipe out. He would erase their memory.
He turned to the last standing structure.
But he stopped.
It felt different, he felt an energy, a memory, compelling him inside.
The half rotted wooden door flew out with the blink of his eye, splintering to pieces as he brought it crashing against the rubble of the now destroyed structures.
Lifting his foot her took a step in and was instantly struct with a barrage images. This place, the force living in between the stones, in the earth below his feet, was speaking to him. He knew why.
He looked around with contempt.
There was nothing of her left in the small stone structure, but it was as if he could almost smell her; smell the faint smell of ithorian roses. He took a seat on a small log positioned in front of an empty fire pit in the middle of the single room. Reb grimaced with angry contentment.
He wanted it. It was why he came here wasn’t it? The sting of memories, memories to fuel him, memories to spurn him.
He closed his eyes, rain trickling down the ends of his hair, streaming down his face.
She looked back at him with pleading, cheeks glistening from rain and sweat, firelight dancing across her pale skin. Slowly, hesitantly, she lifted her hand from beneath the folds of a blanket, fingers twitching with reservation until she extended them too, reaching out for.
“Ben” Came a faint whisper.
He could feel her along the edges of his mind as she’d been called to him by the memories he now dug up, begging to be given admittance, begging to speak to him.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t let that happen.
His mind had already been made.
She was dead to him.
Her life would be his to take away.
He opened his eyes to find the structure in ruins around him, stones piled on top of the other in jagged piles, wind and rain once again assaulting him as he sat amidst the ruins of the past.
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