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He searches for her. Every minute of his waking life he’s looking for her. Even when he’s asleep, he dreams of her. Dreams of finding the one last clue, the one last piece of anything, anything that will bring her into his range.
Kylo Ren thinks of nothing else. It pisses Hux off to no end, knowing that the sulking leader of the Knights is so wrapped up in his own agenda he’s forgotten the true mission of the First Order.
But Kylo thinks Hux can fuck right off.
He can’t help it. Even under the direct training of Snoke, whose darkness and power is so stifling in person he feels himself shrivel like a bug underneath its direct usage, the call to find the scrawny scavenger pounds in his blood.
And he can’t find her. Not after weeks and months of pouring over maps. He can feel her in the Force, but not even days of meditation, forgoing food and water and only focusing on that tiny, distant beam of Light in the darkness can give him any sense of direction.
She’s in his dreams, her eyes just as determined as before. Sometimes, he strikes her down. He thrusts his saber through her chest and watches her die when he extinguishes it. Her limp hand drops his grandfather’s lightsaber, and he takes it from her and puts it in its rightful place – on his belt.
But sometimes she wins. Her erratic movements in real life change into the smooth katas of his perfect opponent. She’s smooth and calm and all of his dreamlike rage cannot overtake her. She defeats him, and in her cool expression she doesn’t even offer him respite in death. Instead she only looks at him in pity.
It feels like it lasts for hours when she looks at him that way, until his rage is snuffed out and all that remains is exhaustion and the overwhelming feeling of defeat.
Then he wakes up, his chest so heavy it’s hard to breathe.
He needs to find her.
The only thing he can do is go back to where she was, where she’d been. He goes to Takodana and into the forest where he caught her, thin and weak, in his arms. Everything had seemed so simple then. She was light in his hold, nothing more substantial or important in her than the knowledge of the map from the BB unit.
It angers him. He slashes trees without reason before he retreats, his presence noticed by someone. He leaves in his shuttle, already knowing where to go next.
Jakku is the same as it was when he left it. Endless sand, disgusting people, and the ships of some battle seen in the horizon. The only difference is a few smoldering remains that haven’t been fully picked through from the attack to attain the traitor, FN-2187. He lands in the outskirts of Niima Outpost, alone and in a small ship. Something pulls him out into the desert, and even though his conscious mind warns him about going it alone, without supplies, he listens to the pull of the Force.
He finds what he’s looking for after a few miles. A capsized AT-AT that sings a siren call to him. He leans over, his hulking build a bit difficult and proving to be a tight squeeze. On the far wall he can see hundreds of scratches that upon closer inspection he sees to be tally marks. It pulls at his heart uncomfortably, and he rubs his chest to relieve some of the pressure.
There’s a tiny cloth doll on the ground.
He doesn’t give it the privilege of him bending down to grab it, despite being hunched over already. He reaches for it with the Force, and it floats easily into his hand.
It feels like it hums or vibrates. He can’t tell. He can’t tell much of anything with all this armor on. With his free hand he undoes the air lock on his helmet, pulling it off of his head and feels the dry, arid air hit his face. He drops the helmet on what seems to be a sleeping bag in the corner and pulls off a glove, feeling the doll against his bare palm.
It still hums, stronger now that it’s against his bare skin. Something niggles in the back of his mind. He closes his eyes, trying to clear his head despite his neck aching at the short ceiling above him. Something’s there, he can feel it just on the outside of his consciousness. What was usually a round sphere of thought and memory now had a tattered edge.
He probes into the rips and tears, feeling feelings that don’t make sense. The frayed edges and rumples that reach out into the vacuum of space. Something else is connecting to the sun-bleached doll in his hand.
It remembers finding a Rebel Alliance helmet at a young age and putting it on, admiring how it’s easier to look at the sun through the yellow tinted visor.
It remembers making up songs as the doll danced in their hand.
It remembers hunger and loneliness. A loneliness that’s so familiar he latches onto it, driving headlong into the abyss between the ragged edges and… He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember what he’s looking into until it’s too late.
Rey.
It’s her doll. Carefully tied together under the tutelage of some old crone from the Outpost who gives her a bit of fluff and claims that “Every little girl needs a doll” and her only companion in the vast emptiness of the desert, with only the Ravager in the distance for company. The long hours of midnight when the lone moon hung high in the clear air and the temperatures plummeted until she shook.
He can’t help it, so wrapped up in her memories, tied so tightly to this fetish of cloth and childhood affection. He feels something he never wants to feel towards anyone, friend or foe.
It’s pity. And the other consciousness he’s connecting to rebels at the sensation, responding strongly with anger back at him. Anger he knows like the back of his own hand, and it’s easy for him to sink his teeth into, wrapping the two of them up in a tangle of thoughts.
Where are you, Scavenger?
Get out of my home.
Her revulsion at him intruding her desert abode hits him in the pit of his stomach until he feels like he’s going to be sick and he stumbles out, finding himself in the frigid blackness of night instead of the blistering heat he’d entered the AT-AT in. He must’ve been meditating for hours.
“I will find you,” he hisses into the air, clutching his abdomen. His heart pounds in his chest, the roaring in his ears deafening. Was her heart beating just as fast?
“I dare you,” he hears in the air and he turns, his lightsaber already lit. But there’s no one behind him, even as he turns around. He’s alone, for miles.
He takes a special, vile pleasure in destroying her home. His saber sparks and slices at the wall of scratches, his hand levitates and crunches the Rebel helmet with disgusting ease. Her sleeping bag ignites in flames and finally, he holds the doll in his hand over the sparking flame.
He can’t do it. He commands his hand to open but it resists, clenching the doll in its safety. He shakes with the exertion to burn the damn thing but it will not drop.
In the end, he returns to his ship with the stupid thing tucked away in his pocket. And in the trip back to base, he tried to eject it into the vacuum of space five times, each time being unable to hit the button.