Log:Kef Bir

Kef Bir

OOC Date: January 20, 2020
Location: Ruins of the Death Star
Participants: Rey, Kylo Ren, Han Solo

It's an arduous climb through the ruins of the Death Star, and for someone who hadn't spent their life crawling up and down the insides of Imperial ruins, it would likely prove impossible. But for a determined scavenger with a particular set of skills, and the Force on her side, the ascent is difficult, but nothing she can't manage.

The throne room is waiting, the throne looming over the shambles of an audience chamber that, thirty years ago, would have inspired awe and dread in anyone who stepped inside. Now, though, it's a mildewed haunt for ghosts of a past evil, one the galaxy thought defeated for good, but within this place sleeps the key to ferreting out the pathway to where that evil has been festering for all these years. She only has to find it.

It was a bit of an unusually gnarly climb for the once Scavenger, now Jedi trainee. With exposed wiring that was still live with electrical power even 30 years later and an unknown level of destructive power that lead to this structure even being in this ocean to begin with, but she managed.

Once she crests the top she's relieved, for numerous reasons, but one of the largest was her hands were growing increasingly slippery from old oils, residue build-up and the flowing of ocean water that was raining down inside the ruins of this place.

At the top, she hoists herself up though and momentarily uses the tabards of her clothing to cleanse her hands off, even if just a little. She places one hand back on the edge of her quarterstaff that is strapped over her shoulders and she starts to wander, starts to explore, and take in the sights of this dismal and decrepit derelict of a space... Ultimately, her stare ends up on the throne that rests beneath that busted window.

There's something about this room that calls to her, a whisper in the walls as the ocean air runs over the metal paneling, and the way that the vacant throne somehow demands attention. But leading away from the throne, a rusty door, somehow still operational, grinds open for the scavenger as if operated by a perceptive ghost.

Behind the door, a storage chamber of some kind awaits her, filled with leftovers of the bygone regime, a trove of tyrant's toys just waiting for someone to come along and pick them up again. 'Hidden' in a pedestal, the pyramid shape of the Sith Wayfinder is inverted and sunk into the surface, lodged there out of casual view.

As her fingers fall on it, the backside of the chamber falls away, stretching off into darkness, and from out of the shadows steps a hooded figure dressed all in black, the kind of garments she's been confronted with many times before, but the face illuminated by the twin sabers that ignite in fiery red is not Kylo's; it's her own.

Rey wanders the ruined chamber, she does have to pull her eyes off of that vacant throne as it reminds of her of the dreams she's been having, the terrible nightmares that have had her waking up more and more frequently. She failed to find the door until a moment before it opened, the grinding gears of its rusty inner workings cause her to jump, even if just a little.

But the open chamber beyond calls to her and she begins to stride inside. Her eyes scan the interior of the darkened room. Its not -as- ruined as the previous room, this one having suffered less from the elements of this Ocean Moon for the past several decades...

She wanders onward until she passes a corner and sees her goal, floating there, suspended by an invisible pull. Rey scurries over to it, adjusting her quarterstaff a little to free up both of her hands and she reaches out for it.

As she does this though, the sudden presence draws her attention and she twirls around to find herself... staring at herself! She stares the dark doppelganger down as it steps toward her and it shakes her head beneath her voluminous robe. "Don't be afraid of who you are." It says to her in a way that almost sounds teasing.

Red light fills the room, as a double bladed saber is activated and unfolds. Quickly it is followed by the spark of brilliant bright blue! The figure in dark lunges at Rey and she raises her blade to defend herself!

The double-bladed saber unfolds, and locks into place, an angry red echo of Rey's scavenged staff, and with a twisted snarl, the dark image of herself leaps at the woman, bringing the weapon around in a vicious arc. Rey's blue blade stops the attack, but her counter is easily ducked by the hooded figure, who swings out of the way with ease, moving more quickly, striking harder, dodging faster. Everything Rey is, this vision of her has the same and more of it, a glimpse of her full potential. The red blade is held menacingly as the dark warrior circles Rey, cutting her off from the exit she came in through.

After their blades connect and the Dark Visage of herself steps back and then starts to stalk around to block her from leaving the storage chamber. Rey stares back at her and clutches her saber in her left hand while her right holds the Wayfinder.

Twice, Rey has been told not to fear who she is. Leia had said it to her before she'd left Ajan Kloss, now this 'thing' had repeated it to her... too strange to be a coincidence. "You're not real." Rey says to herself.

"You're a figment of my fears manifested by this place. Its a dark heart and you're the blood pumping through it." And with that observation laid out, Rey starts to walk forward, boldly attempting to ignore the Phantom Menace of herself and attempt to simply leave the chamber with the Device in-hand.

The phantom is less convinced by Rey's boldness, and the sabers that hurtle towards her in a relentless assault seem to be on its side, clashing with Rey's and forcing her to continue defending herself from the rapid-fire attacks until finally, in a rage, the dark version of herself, the dark part of herself, pulls back her lips from fang-like teeth in a feral hiss of fury. Her hand stretches out and the force of her will pushes the scavenger bodily from the chamber, back into the throne room, and the door slams shut between them.

The Wayfinder, tossed from Rey's hand, rolls across the floor and comes to a stop when a black boot rests upon it. "I thought I might find you here." This time, the figure in black is a face she was expecting, pale, scarred from their encounter in the woods on Starkiller Base. "You know what this is. You know what it means. This place, this thing you came to find. It's the power you've always had inside you. Calling to you." He shakes his head, resting a hand on his thigh. "You can't go back now. Not after this. You're not a Jedi. She'll know when she looks at you. She'll know why you really came."

That PUSH from the Force catches Rey by surprise. She truly believed this 'thing' to be fake but... it all felt so real. So real that it pulled her off of her best, it made her weaker to its desires and it gave 'it' an advantage over her. So when the push comes, it flings Rey full on into the air and propels her toward the doors that spread open, allowing her to fly through, then slam shut again as she slams to the rusty wet floor of the throne room at the foot of that dark empty throne.

The Wayfinder had been lost, her lightsaber had shut off... but his voice draws her attention and causes her to instantly forget the pain she'd felt from the shove and fall. Rey shoots back to her feet and spins around to see 'him' here, with the Wayfinder now. His words bleed into the corners of her mind and pull powerfully on the anger she tries to keep down and away from her forethoughts.

Her lightsaber snaps back to life at her side, and with water dripping down her face from the seas crashing against the broken chamber and spilling on inside. Rey growls the words out to him. "Give. It. To. Me." Its all she can bare to say in response to his claim of her failure and inability to return to Leia, to someone she believes to be 'her' mother now. He's playing on her insecurities, just as the Dark mirror of herself had in the storage room.

"I can't do that," Kylo replies, shaking his head at her again, and calls the Wayfinder up into his hand. There's a moment's resistance from the ancient relic, and then his gloved fingers cave in the sides, crushing the archaic device and destroying the information tied up in its structure. "There's only one way you get to Palpatine, and that's with /me./" The drawing of her saber brings his to his hand, and the red blade ignites with a crackling growl as it rips into existence.

Some part of her thought she could get it from him, or at least find an opportunity to knock it from his possession and call it to HER hand, but when he beats her to that and smashes it, she feels rage swell up inside of her!

The pressure of the entire Resistance riding on her shoulders, her friends needing her, the galaxy needing her... to get that -device-.

"Nnnnnoooo!" Rey screams as she hesitates no longer and suddenly rushes toward him to swing the weightless blue beam of light toward him only to have him dodge it once, twice, a third time, then ignite his own saber as they spin around one another and dance toward the edge of the broken walkway that she'd climbed up from.

One thing Kylo would realize that he's definitely been pushing her buttons to the point where she's not trying to hold back any longer, she'll kill him here and now if he leaves her even the slightest opening and she's come a long way from the forest on Starkiller!

He knows.

He just doesn't care. When Rey screams and charges at him, he pulls his body away from her, much like Luke did on Crait, managing to avoid her attacks three times before that fiery blade appears in his hand to defend him. Everything has led to this, to this fight on the ruins of the Death Star, the remains of his grandfather's last great act. He would succeed where her grandfather could not. He would turn the last Jedi to the Dark Side. All he had to do was outlast her, and convince her to give in to the anger she'd clearly already begun to embrace.

The blows he returns at her are aggressive and powerful as always, but there's no malice behind them, and it shows on his face. It's not rage, it's a resigned determination. It has to be this way. It always had to be this way.

As she comes at him, he fades back, letting her drive him out of the throne room into the open air, where they're exposed to the crash of the waves and raging tides of the sea. "You can still take my hand!" he yells to her over the roar of the water. "We'll defeat him together! It's the only way!"

As the two duelists make it out of the Throne Room and onto the ledge of the fallen Death Star debris, two more figures make their way up from the bowels of the wreckage. Finn and Jannah had taken the second seat skiff and were catching up to Rey, Jannah entirely confused about all of this but Finn and she share a bond and his insistence in the urgency of getting to Rey was enough to convince her to come along.

"Do you hear that?" Finn asks Jannah in the shadowy corridor. The sounds of humming and blades clashing... he knows that noise. "He's here."

"Who?" Jannah asks.

"Him." Finn responds with anger on the edge of his tone. He pushes onward and she moves to follow.

Outside... Rey screams as she sweeps her blade around again to clash with Kylo's and block the deflecting strikes that he sends her way. His words are heard, but she doesn't vocally respond to him, she's lost in rage, more angered than she's ever been in all her life. Angry /because/ of her life. She's been left i nthe dark for two decades, left behind, lost in all of this, treated like she was a worthless piece of forgotten refuse, and now told? Now told that she's the granddaughter of the literal worst creature to ever inhabit the stars? Yeah, she's angry about it, all of it.

Her blade strikes down against his, fire against ice, and as she sweeps around she hears a familiar voice pierce the heated battle.

"REY!" Finn shouts, jogging well ahead of Jannah now, trying to catch up to the Jedi.

"Noooo!" Rey shouts when she hears him, she twirls around and sends her hand out to Force push him back! He'll kill Finn if Finn intervenes! He'll end him without remorse and it would be... more than she could bare!

She shoves him with the Force and twirls herself around... and runs. She runs for the edge of the toppled monolith that they're fighting upon. She runs and JUMPS to the next one to scale it and get further distance between her and Finn. If he can't reach them then he won't get hurt!

The edge of that massive wave is on Rey's heels as she jumps, the water rushing up over the debris and erasing Kylo from view as she hurtles away over a gap in the wreckage. When it breaks and falls back into the sea, he's revealed again, soaked to the skin and dripping, the lit saber still held in his hand as he advances towards the gap and leaps. His cape is heavy and sodden, but the dark warrior still crosses the distance with ease, putting space between the duel and anyone who might intervene as a consequence.

Without hesitating, he launches back onto the offensive, hacking away at Rey with powerful strikes that slowly but surely batter down her defenses. The tip of his saber nicks her arm and the next blow forces the Jedi trainee to her knees. His weapon lifts again to disarm her completely and demand her loyalty one more time.

And then he hears it.

"Ben."

The whisper echoes in his mind, and as it fades away, something else does too. Something he didn't know he was holding onto, and when it slips from his grasp, so does the lightsaber in his hand, falling from his shocked fingers, forgotten. His mouth opens and he breathes a quiet panicked gasp.

Rey watches him advance upon her after her backward tumbling flip leads her to landing solidly near to the end of the metal pathway that they're sharing for this conflict. She stalks backward as far as she can really go without stumbling across too much uneven ground and she watches him advance forward, calmly. He's not even winded, he doesn't look remotely tired or injured by any of what they've done. She feels dread at his approach, but resolves herself and moves forward to continue to push at him!

She's trained for this!

Their sabers clash again and again until she spins around and-- his red blade glances off of her back and it sends her stumbling forward onto her knees on the ocean soaked floor of this forgotten fortress. She turns around just in time to see him advance upon her and raise his blade...

But something overtakes him, she isn't sure what it is, but he drops his weapon and it gets her to react, to sweep out her hand and wrap her fingers around its hilt. She's held it before, she used it in Snoke's Throne Room briefly. Its heavier than the Skywalker saber, deadlier in weight and feel.

She swipes the blade on and slams it forward into his sternum! With teeth gritted she feels a joyous moment of triumph over this dark shadow of a harassing man who's pushed her to this edge by ever angling his dark ways upon her!

But that triumphant moment is gone in a flash as the Force strikes her with the knowledge of...

"Leia." Rey gasps. She deactivates the lightsaber and looks into his eyes to see him. Quickly she stands and drops his saber's hilt to the wet ground as she takes a step back from him, from it all.

She could feel it, she could see it in his eyes too.

She was gone...

The saber crashes into him, and for a moment Kylo stands there spitted on his own blade, his hands grasping uselessly at the air, pieces of the rubble around them rising and falling clattering back to the monstrous chunk of metal they're standing on before the saber deactivates and he collapses in a heap, a thin trail of smoke drifting up in lazy curls from the wound in his body. His hair hangs heavy and wet against his face, eyes looking down, fingers clutching the skin around the wound. His chest heaves in long, shuddering gasps as he struggles to breathe.

None of it mattered. None of it mattered. None of it mattered.

Water drips from his chin onto his soaked tunic. It's hard to focus, and he hears it again in his head. "Ben." Then that slipping away. It plays on repeat in his head, and nothing can pull his mind away from it, not even the hole in his ruined body. "Ben." Then nothing. "Ben." Then nothing.

None of it mattered.

Rey watches him crumple to the ground. Both of them sharing the effect of Leia's sudden death through the Force, but even she doesn't realize how deeply personal Leia had reached out to him before passing. Rey leans down, wincing from the pain to the glancing lightsaber blade across her back, feeling her own wound sizzling there, but his far worse... his signaling impending demise.

She moves to his side and crouches down, water dripping down her face and onto his shoulder, his arm. She raises her right hand up and moves it over his chest and down to his stomach where she can see his wound in the hole seared open across his tunic. She spreads her fingers apart and places her palm over his wound.

She closes her eyes and squeezes them shut, her eyebrows visibly twitch as she calls upon the training from the Jedi Texts. She had deciphered them months ago with Threepio at her side. The ability to heal another, training she'd helped pass on to the new students at the new Academy, training that was dangerous to one's self, but still... possible if applied just-so.

She struggles with it though, as this wound is more than she's ever healed before. She thinks back to the first time she'd ever used it. Jessika Pava had a small cut on her cheek and Rey, stepping out of a flight simulator pod had noticed it on the pilot's face. She'd stepped over to her and asked her for permission. Jessika had given it to her and after cupping the side of Jess' face for a moment, she pulled her hand away and the scratch was gone...

Rey concentrates on that memory, the memory of Jessika's smile after seeing and feeling that act of 'magic' performed on her. It helps fuel Rey's concentration here to reach deeper and heal 'more' than that.

Now, her eyes flash open and she pulls her dripping hand away from Kylo's stomach, and the wound begins to seal itself up, quickly repairing itself in the wake of the Jedi's touch.

Rey's eyes look up to his as she breathes easier now. "I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand." She finally says to him with waves crashing all around them yet still. "Every time you offered it, it haunted me. Because you weren't Ben." She adds, weary emotions rolling across her expression as she turns and gathers up her lightsaber.

She doesn't wait for a response from him, she just starts to run for the far platform of the structure. Toward the starship he'd brought here. She has to leave, she has to get away from all of it!

When Rey crouches down, Kylo squints his eyes shut, water still running down off his face, preparing for the final blow. When he feels her hand on his wound instead, he opens them again, blinking at her through the haze of what he's lost and the injury that is sapping his life away. The wound begins to knit itself closed, and as it does, his breathing comes progressively easier, deepening and taking on a sense of vitality that his struggling gasps were absent of.

He watches her as she explains herself, listening as best he can, his face pale as a ghost's, though the angry red scar from their encounter in the forest all that time ago has vanished, sealed up by the infusion of life she's given to him. His mouth opens to reply, but he can't find the words to say, and they die on his lips as she turns to run away from him. Instead, he watches helplessly from his wet seat on the monolith as she clambers up onto his ship and prepares to jet off to Force knows where and leave him stranded here alone.

Rey nimbly scales the red and black TIE Fighter's hull, vanishes up inside of it like a field mouse into a piece of machinery. She disappears inside of it and within moments she has the fighter's reactor coming online and moments later it is rising up off of the wreckage toward the sky.

In the distance, down below, Finn watches the TIE climb higher into the sky after seeing Rey disappear into it. She was leaving, leaving him, leaving all of them behind. But why?

Jannah looks to Finn and grasps him by the shoulder. "We have to go." She says after seeing Finn's friend fleeing in a First Order TIE. "Where there's one, there's thousands. We've got to go now, Finn." She says to him.

And off to the south the shape of the Millennium Falcon can be seen growing closer, headed for them. Poe and Chewie had it working again, they needed to get aboard it and get to the sky as well.

Finn follows Jannah's lead, but looks back to the sky where the clouds were thick in the air, the dark dot of the TIE starfighter vanishes amongst them.

From his spot on the wreck, Kylo watches as Rey takes off and soars up into the sky in his TIE fighter, and then as the Falcon similarly departs, and he is left alone.

It's hard to say how long he sits there. An hour? More? But eventually he climbs to his feet, his soggy boots heavy and squishing under them as he stoops to recover his lightsaber and hooks it back on his belt. The tough but fine garments he's worn since his ascension to Supreme Leader hang from him, dragged down by the weight of the saltwater, sporting a hole in the torso. Defeated and bereft of the one thing he had convinced himself he had already lost, he stands looking out at the sea.

As the Falcon's shadow sweeps across the Death Star's remains, it moves just above and behind Kylo on the spire that he'd chosen to stand upon and reflect upon. As the Falcon vanishes into the clouds, a voice speaks into Kylo's mind.

"Hey, Kid." A familiar voice, a rugged and aged voice.

When Kylo turns around he'll see him again, clear as day, the light of the sun illuminating the face of his father. Han steps toward Kylo on the battered weather worn pier and he raises his scarred chin up just enough to help punctuate his words to follow. "I miss you, Son." He tells his boy, voice sincere as it had been the last time they'd spoken, though softer in resolution of all that had happened since then.

The weight of everything that has just transpired is too much to stave off the voices in his head any longer, and when confronted with his father's face, Kylo is unable to push it away into the back of his mind, unable to dispel the vision with a wave of his hand. Instead he stands there, shivering from the cold, and the sight is almost too much for him to bear. "Your son," he answers, in a voice that quavers with the effort, "is dead. He was weak," he adds, feeling the truth of those words now more than ever, swallowing and blinking his eyes hard. "And foolish. I destroyed him." He shakes his head, dropping his eyes. "There's nothing left of him now."

The words that Han hears don't seem to sway him in the least, they don't seem to falter his gaze or sway his stance in the slightest. In fact he just steps forward, closer, to close the space between them. "No." He says then with a subtle, dismissive, shake of his head to the right and back again. "You didn't. My son is alive. Kylo Ren is dead." Those words linger as the waves continue to crash at the base of the spire that they share together. "Its time for you to come home. Its where you belong. Where you've always belonged." Han's words are spoken with care and affection for his son, no fear or worry for him, only belief and faith in him here and now.

Kylo shakes his head, swallowing again, his damp hair plastered to his face as he looks up into his father's eyes again. "I can't." The waves crash against the chunk of rubble they're standing on, a few particles of the spray reaching them, though Han is unaffected by it. "I've done too much. There's no going back for me now. It's too late." A moment passes while the sea tosses on, and he speaks into existence the thing he hates the most. "She's gone. She's gone and it's my fault. It's all my fault."

Han's stare continues to be locked solely on that of his son's face, none of the madness of their shared surroundings matter to him, only the well being of his boy. "Its not too late." He responds to that from him, even gives another little shake of his head side to side. "We can always go back. We can always go home. Our mistakes can always be repaired, Son." There comes a small pause from his aged father's remarks, the wind of the ocean world sending the gray strands of his hair about his head as he tips his chin up just a little again. "Your mother is gone. But what she she stood for, what she fought for? That's not gone." Another pause comes, it lingers between them for a few more moments.

"Ben." Han says, breaking the silence. His left hand raises and he moves to place it on the side of his boy's face, to hold it as he had on the walkway the last time they'd spoken.

"You're just a memory inside my head," Kylo starts to object, shaking his head at his father's words. "I want to come home. I want to go back and change everything I've done. I want to be free of this pain that I've created." When Han's hand rests against his cheek again, he takes in a shuddering breath. "I know what I have to do," he admits, shivering in the cold and the damp, his voice shaking. "But I don't know if I have the strength to do it." He drops his face again, touching his chin to his chest and breaking the contact between them.

With his hand held on the side of his son's face, Han gives him a single and decisive nod to acknowledge his words, to acknowledge the emotion and spirit behind and within them.

"You do. You have my strength, and you have her strength inside of you. You're stronger than you ever realized." Han shows the hint of a half smirk then and gives another slight shake of his head. His hand comes away from his Son's face then and returns to his side.

When the hand drops away, the lightsaber at his side is unclipped and brought around slowly to fill the space between them, his head down as his eyes follow the motion and the memory of doing this before stabs through his mind. Intense regret washes over him like one of the waves crashing on the wreckage, and his head lifts again, seeking his father's eyes intently, blurting out in a quavering voice, "Dad, I-"

Han's hands go to his hips now, his elbows push outward and his posture seems to soften further as he relaxes a little more. His eyes remain on his Son's face though and when he hears that last word and the trouble that follows it, he responds to it by tilting his head just a little, then showing the hints of a half smirk to his boy before him.

"I know." He says, grumbling the word out with a reluctant affection that is truly his own personal style.

His aged expression shows the sincerity behind his own emotions, his eyes are soft and his stare warm with love for his son. He did know. He always knew. He forgave him the moment it happened back then. Han signed up for this life, knowing what came with it. Nothing ever took his love for his son away. Nothing ever could.

He stands there, looking into his father's eyes, seeing the love that still stubbornly persists for him there, and he knows that it didn't need to be said. His father knew. He always knew. Even after everything he'd done, he knew.

Resolve surges up in his mind and he turns abruptly away, the lightsaber that has been the symbol of his fall into darkness, the weapon he's caused so much misery with, cocked behind his shoulder, and with a heave born of furious rejection of everything it stands for, Ben hurls it into into the sea, watching as it tumbles end over end before dropping out of sight below the waves.

When he turns back, his father is gone, but for the first time in years, he feels peace between them.

Fumbling fingers unhook the heavy, wet black cape from his shoulders and it falls to the floor of the wreckage. "I know what I have to do," he whispers to himself again, and sets off towards the interior of the ruins. "Let's see if anything still flies."