The Rebels Last Stand
Chapter LXXIV: Without
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To start from Chapter I, go here: https://how-do-i-turn-this-thing-off.tumblr.com/post/169184041771/oh-my-god-you-know-what-i-want-i-want-rey-to-be
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The spacedock was packed with Hux's stormtroopers as the transport doors opened in front of Ren, their helmets a landscape of white, almost from wall to wall, as if they were in formation for a troop review. They started firing the moment they saw him and if he hadn't put himself at the front of his own company they all would have been cut down in seconds. As it was his mind reached, the Force surging in him as his lightsaber moved blindingly fast, deflecting the first round of blaster bolts just long enough to free a hand so he could reach out at random, grabbing a group of stormtroopers on the right and smashing them into their companions on the left, sweeping across the room so that half of the company was suddenly bowled over by the crush of their fellows. He lost some of his own men in the maneuver, unable to both shield them and use such a punishing Force Push, but it halved the capacity of the enemy to keep firing, allowing him to step forward.
Lives, paid for lives. The way of war. He spared it no attention as he came into melee contact with men who had been his not so long ago, cutting through them. Armor gave way to flesh, both the white and the red matter burned black by his blade. He could only keep moving. He was followed, he felt that much, but by how many he couldn't know, except that Chewie remained close by his left shoulder, his bowcaster flexing, miniature explosions throwing soldiers into the air wherever it was aimed. Rose was somewhere in the very back, also firing, but as covered as she could be. Blaster bolts moved past him in a blur from both in front and behind, and his lightsaber lived with him, drawing on his power freely, the blade sweeping, rising and falling in his hands, biting into the soldiers who had betrayed him.
Rey, he said, again, in his head, as he had so many times before. He couldn't feel her, but she must be here. Rey, an echo of so many lonely nights. They were her lonely nights also. They had called each other's names so many times to the empty stars. But the stars were not empty now.
The Force moved and behind him and to his right he felt the doors on the right side of the spacedock open, heard the battle cries of the Rebels, and continued to angle himself in that direction, pushing the enemy stormtroopers in a circling pattern left. He hadn't been able to give Poe as much room as he would have liked but it didn't seem to deter the Rebels at all, and they were shooting the moment they had enough space to see what they were shooting at. Their blaster bolts joined the fray, the blue bolts of the regular Resistance blasters mixed with the red bolts of the many First Order blasters he'd helped them steal, and together they manuvered their way toward each other. It didn't take long to meet up, and Ren was surprised in a moment of relative calm to recognize Sergeant on his right, firing for all he was worth and making a noticeable dent in the enemy line in front of him.
“Any sign of them?” Poe yelled from somewhere behind Ren as Rose aligned with him, still firing.
“Nothing,” Ren yelled back. Poe shouted a couple of orders and they began to move again, Rebels and red stormtroopers together, pushing to cut off the enemy stormtroopers from their own transport. At least a couple at the back noticed the maneuver and tried to retreat, ducking towards the Lamda's doors, but Chewie ululated what Ren seemed to remember was a very bad word in Wookie, the bowcaster shooting several times in quick succession, and the opening was for a moment lost in smoke and debris as the nearest stormtroopers were hit, their bodies thrown up almost high enough to touch the ceiling before coming back down, limp and lifeless.
“Thanks, Chewie,” Poe said as Ren used the moment of sudden uncertainty he could feel in front of him to push forward, clearing the way further. Rey, he said again in the Force, and felt what he could almost call a response, albeit one he didn't recognize. It was as though something other than her was calling back to him, and he didn't have the time or the mental space to make sense of it as the leading edge of the Rebels finally reached the Lamda's doors and set themselves in perimeter positions in front of it, securing the opening. Poe was first to get there and ducked inside, Rose practically his shadow; there was a quick, sharp burst of blaster fire, then Ren and Chewie joined them, Ren cutting down the last guards who came forward, their bolts unable to touch them.
The Lamda's interior was plush and expensive, a far cry from the cold and industrial spacedock he'd just stepped out of, but no amount of soft lighting or expensive carpet could cushion the blow of what was waiting for him; Rey, unconscious, in the arms of Leia, who was bleeding, and Ammu and Ani, the little boy shaken with silent tears on his cheeks, Ammu favoring a foreleg with a large and oozing burn blistered almost all the way across its joint. The dead stormtroopers all around them, as well as the several broken pairs of stuncuffs on the floor, told the rest of the story as Poe knelt just next to Rey with Rose on the floor on her other side, grabbing a battered medical sensor out of his pocket and hovering the blue light over her face, her chest.
“How is she?” Ren asked, taking off his helmet for the moment, his heart in his throat, his blade slack in his other hand.
“Unconscious, but alright,” Poe said, but Leia was staring straight at him, and only when he raised his eyes to hers did he realize that this was the first time they'd really seen each other up close since he was a boy.
“She's not alright,” Leia said, to him, specifically. “She's fallen.”
For a moment, the word didn't register. For a moment, he didn't understand her meaning. But then he looked at Rey and opened himself to her, truly, fully, in their bond, and what he found there was such a tidal wave of Dark Force energy that it seemed for a moment to wash over him as well, to try and capsize him. He braced himself as if against a Push- it felt so real in his mind that he was almost sure of its physical presence- but the Dark Force within him was joined with it, and so it did nothing to him.
“I don't understand,” he said, stepping toward Rey, but to go to her meant to go to his mother also and he stopped, uncertain. “How did this happen?” Poe and Leia glanced at each other, something unspoken between them, and it twisted itself within Ren with an edge of betrayal that bordered on rage, and that he had to work to push away. “I cannot help her if I do not know,” he pointed out.
“Help her,” Leia demanded. “Why would you want to help her?”
“It was the crystal,” Ammu said before she was done speaking, the shining tears on his green cheeks apparent also in the rough scratch of his voice. “It's in her sword.”
“We're taking her with us,” Leia said, as Ren noticed for the first time a second source of Dark Force energy, focused on an unfamiliar lightsaber hanging from Leia's belt. “We don't need you to save her.” At that even Poe looked at her with a slightly doubtful cast, but Ren ignored all of it, switching off his own lightsaber, returning it to his belt, and centering himself. Beyond the Lambda the battle still raged- at the very edge of his senses, he could feel the Knights had arrived- but there was nothing more important than what was in front of him, as he reached out, closed his eyes and went in to Rey.
“It's not the Dark Force she's fighting,” he said aloud, surprised. Rey and the darkness were one; she worked in it and through it, or rather, it was responding to her will even though she didn't seem to be fully aware of it, focused more on him, on Leia, and on another battle. There was something else in her, a different enemy, and as he found it his eyes snapped open.
“She will not be safe as long as the Dark Force is in her,” Leia said, her face still older than her remembered it, still smaller than he remembered it, but her expression remarkably cold and set in a way he didn't remember at all.
“What have you done?” he murmured, the rage he'd turned away from before coming back within him, building and building. Rey didn't need his help now so he withdrew from her, returning his focus to the battle at his back. The Knights were causing havoc, as was their way, and the combined red stormtroopers and Rebels protecting them at the door were holding steady, but in order for the plan to work they needed to all be off this spacedock within minutes. There was no time for subtlety, and he was in no mood for it. “Tell them,” he said to Leia, gesturing at Poe, at Rose, at Chewie, lingering behind him and to the side, watching. “Tell them what you've given her.”
“A sedative,” she said coolly.
“What kind of sedative?” She said nothing, so he repeated, “What kind of sedative, mother?” The word hit between them like a challenge, a bitter demand, and when she pursed her lips, her eyes still on him, and said nothing, he did it for her. “She dosed Rey with SLV-16. It sedates, because it forces the will of the user onto the victim. Rey is helpless to do anything other than what she is told while it's in her.”
“If she can be contained, she can be helped,” Leia insisted.
“It's mind control?” Rose demanded, looking at Ren, her expression all astonishment and horror.
“Reductive, but essentially, yes. A Sith weapon,” he said humorlessly, donning his helmet.
“The darkness is not forever, Ben,” Leia insisted, the slightest blush of humanity finally showing in her expression, but for him, not for Rey. “Anything that is lost can be found.”
“The Dark Force does not take your will from you, mother. Only people do that.” He looked away from her finally, back at Rey's face, now turned toward him, her eyes open, and held out his hand.
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