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The Movement

Chapter 19: That I Hold the Keys

Summary:

Rey finds First Order hospitality lacking.

Notes:

Hey all. This is a bad one. Rey's interrogation by Kyo. I am including a summary with SPOILERS in the end notes for those of you who want to tread extra carefully.

With everything going on with the US Supreme Court right now, I completely understand if you don't want to read this chapter now. Save it for another time. Do what you need to do to protect yourselves.

 

Warnings:

- Restraints, interrogation, threat of torture/torture
- PTSD Flashback with detailed account of past sexual assault. This part is written in ITALICS if you need to skip it.
- Sexual assault/groping
- Psychological abuse, manipulation, abusive language

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The darkness isn’t kind to Rey. Unconsciousness is plagued by terrible visions, frightening occurrences both real and imagined. No matter how fast she flees, no matter how well she hides, she is stalked by the spectre of evil, it’s embodiment whom she seems destined to meet again and again. Running isn’t an option anymore. Perhaps it’s been fruitless all along. Perhaps she belongs to the darkness.

 

Awareness is heralded through her spirit like the feeling of thousands of tiny needles piercing her skin. Her eyes fly open and her heart jumps into her throat. Instantly, she’s aware that she’s restrained – at the wrists and ankles. Stiff metal cuffs. Though she doesn’t want to acknowledge it, it’s clear where she is. This is the box – the mobile torture chamber she’d found Poe inside.

 

The same chilling metal slab he laid on, which she now inhabits. Same dark, sterile corners. Most horrifyingly, the same medical implements for macabre misuse.

 

All those details register, but she barely sees them, every fibre fixated on the man – the beast – facing her. He’s quietly seated, lounging like a panther, all potential energy and warning signs. Danger emanates off him like heat, like radiation, like a contagion too lethal and transmissible to contain. The darkness of the room and blackness of his clothing make him appear to bleed at the edges, semi-incorporeal like a phantom.

 

She stares into the soulless glass sockets of the mask for an eternity, the stillness between them almost otherworldly. Her body reacts with all the usual signs of fear to his presence: heartrate elevating, breath quickening. Rey’s eyes strain impossibly wide, her field of vision narrowing, focusing. Her mind, however, is calm.

 

There’s something of an inevitability to this reunion. Deep in her bones, Rey’s always known, since the moment she escaped his grasp, that they would meet again. That she would never be free of him. Until she ends him.

 

With the nearly ponderous movement of some massive creature, his weight begins to shift forward, his intention clear to rise. She instantly bares her teeth, practically snarling. Slowly, uncoiling – snakelike – he ascends and approaches.

 

Just inside of the edge of her personal comfort, he stops, looming over her with every inch of menace his in his six-foot-plus frame. Her lip curls as she tilts her gaze up, furiously maintaining some semblance of true eye contact, of power.

 

Still, the fear she should be feeling doesn’t hit.

 

Through clenched teeth, she spits: “Where am I?”

 

Kylo doesn’t respond for a long moment, his weight shifting from side to side in a deeply unsettling manner. It’s as though he’s on a hair trigger, constantly poised to attack. Finally, she hears that voice – distorted, disturbing – yet still familiar.

 

“You’re my guest.”

 

She sucks a sharp breath into her lungs, panic hitting like a slap as nausea rolls through her. His guest. He’s insane.

 

“Where are the others?” she demands, her imagination running wild with visions of her friends as fellow captives.

 

Something like a scoff originates from the mouthpiece of the mask, the silver filter glinting dully in the gloom. “You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?” his voice is soft, tone mild, “You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.”

 

Rey bites back a relieved sigh, swallowing it down in a vain attempt to stay calm, to appear unruffled by him. It probably futile – he’s always been able to read her so easily. Hatred suddenly rears its head, ugly and snarled deep into a thicket of resentment, loneliness, and yearning.

 

He watches her silently. He studies her. In a detached, scientific manner. God, it’s so familiar. The feeling of his gaze on her – like he’s assessing her; weighing her pros and cons and always finding her wanting – sends a shiver of intimately memorable ice down her spine. She trembles with rage, refusing to speak.

 

“You still want to kill me.”

 

It’s a statement, an observation. Not a question. As though he had read her mind.

 

Yet… with an odd note, like her hatred is almost a surprise to him.

 

She nearly chokes, a sick, disbelieving laugh tangled in her throat. Of-fucking-course she wants to kill him! He’s hounded her every step, massacred untold innocents, tortured her friends. He’s grotesque!

 

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask!” she hisses, fury lacing her every word.

 

He’s motionless, the dark threat constantly pouring off him palpable in the air. Suddenly, his hands move to either side of his helmet. There’s an unnerving hiss of gas escaping. With a soft click and the creak of leather, the flat visage is swiftly removed. A flash of his thick, black locks precedes the wholly unexpected reveal of his true face. Her mind goes blank. For a moment, he doesn’t face her head-on, and her gasp is audible.

 

He looks just the same as she remembers.

 

His generous lips, perpetually pressed tense or downturned; his beautifully pale skin, sprinkled with freckles and moles like a constellation; the strong profile of his nose, and the dark, heavy brows that often concealed the deceptive softness of his deep brown eyes.

 

Then, he turns to meet her gaze.

 

This time, Rey finds herself unable to even draw breath. Split across his face, from just above his left eyebrow, down over his nose and below his right eye, is the scar Rey gave him. The reason he wears the mask.

 

The affected skin is highly discoloured: angry and red. It almost appears as though a long, ragged strip of skin his been peeled from his face, the resulting new flesh looking shiny, tender, and raw. As if it had only recently occurred, is somehow still healing. The scar tissue also seems to be tighter and less flexible than the rest of the skin surrounding it, slightly pulling the lower lid of his right eye down and dragging the corner of his mouth up into a permanent, alarming snarl.

 

His damaged eye is discoloured, the iris a yellowy gold rimmed with red, constantly weeping. It gives him an almost pitiable appearance. Bizarrely, even with the disfigurement, Ren could still be considered an unconventionally attractive man. The wound does nothing to detract from his unique bone structure and sheer bulk.

 

She’s mildly shocked to realize that he’s even vain enough to feel the need to cover it.

 

Rey surprises herself by meeting his scrutiny head-on, confronting the monster from her nightmares without flinching. Not that she isn’t afraid; far from it. She’s terrified, finally. Icy fingers of horror lovingly caress her spine. Still, she’s become oddly accustomed to the feeling. This precise sensation has been a constant to varying degrees from moment to moment since she escaped this… leviathan of a man.

 

Their final altercation at the university begins to run on a silent, staticky loop at the back of her head as they continue their visual stand-off. The action of the memory moves along at slow speed, Rey half-watching and only partially aware of the scene playing itself out over and over again.

 

Ben, familiar face twisted and fanatic, ranting almost incoherently about fate and destiny as he backed her toward the lab benches. His huge fists closing around her forearms as his hips ground forward, sandwiching her between his considerable bulk and the metal countertop. His voice, shaking her to her core with every horrific word that fell from his suddenly unfamiliar lips.

 

Her own weak attempts to push him away.

 

Some small part of her still hoped that he was rational enough to hear the word “no,” and back off. He wasn’t. Instead, he pressed his hot, moist mouth against hers, pushing his tongue past the gateway of her unyielding lips.

 

He was just so physically overwhelming, and his assault so utterly unexpected that Rey was completely defenceless against him. The broiling, wet intrusion of the thick, slick muscle of his tongue had her gagging. She could feel her throat close and spasm even as her fists beat at the brick wall of his chest with all her might. He wouldn’t be moved.

 

In fact, Rey had been able feel her back bowing under his power and his weight, her pained cry lost to his punishing mouth. His objective to lay her out on the bench was as clear and alarming as a klaxon, and she’d fought even harder, twisting and jerking her body in a worthless attempt to dislodge his grip. The effort was useless, any martial knowledge she retained from childhood blanked from her brain in the wake of his shocking onslaught.

 

Before she could put up any more opposition, Ben had succeeded in wrestling her to the table. He grunted, abandoning his mighty grip on her arms to put his considerable strength into forcing her legs apart. It distracted him enough that he was compelled to pull back from their forced kiss.

 

Rey had wrenched her face to the side with a short, despairing cry.

 

Ben growled in response to her distress, the sound excited in a way that sent primal fear pulsing out from the base of her skull. His teeth descended to her neck as she simultaneously tried to squirm away while keeping her legs shut. Strangled, choking sobs escaped with every panicked breath she took. Heat baked off him, stifling her, making her feel like she couldn’t breathe. Most of his weight settled along her body, pressing even more air from her lungs. Every feeble escape she made gruesomely seemed to feed his fervour.

 

His breath was harsh and foul so near her face, and she curled away from him as best she could. Her gaze rolled up and away from his face, the thought of looking at her friend while he wrought havoc and such unspeakable damage to her body simply too much to bear.

 

She could smell the sharpness of his sweat as he began to perspire with the struggle. Rey kept pushing desperately at his shoulders, trying to force his uninvited mouth off her skin. Then, with little apparent effort on Ben’s side, he suddenly snapped, prying her knees apart, his patience was at an abrupt and violent end.

 

“Tell me about him: the – general.”

 

The young doctor is wrenched from her flashback by Kylo’s unexpected question. Ever the open book, she knows her expression briefly reflects her confusion at his line of inquiry. Swiftly, she recovers, her childhood training a painful boon once again. It doesn’t stop the rage that follows, though.

 

“General Dameron?” she sneers, “You mean the man you tortured; the human being who you tried to flay alive? …You’re a monster.”

 

“He’s a traitor. And a coward. He tried to keep me from what is rightfully mine.”

 

Ren’s tone is matter of fact; his condemnation absolute. He speaks as though they’re having a perfectly civil conversation. Rey may be spitting venom, she may be shackled to a table, there may be an undercurrent of violence to his every move, but to him, this is just another Tuesday.

 

“He signed his own death warrant long before I got my hands on him, Rey… And you. You – joined – him... Became a slave. Weak. Trying to treat the symptoms rather than eradicate the disease.”

 

At some point, Kylo has gotten so close that her entire perception is him, his frame filling her field of vision with an unspoken threat. It occurs to her somewhere in the back of her panicked brain that he’s curiously scentless, now. Hints of ozone and the harsh burn of chemicals are the only smells that seem to hover around him, and only at the edges of perception.

 

She’s staring up at him, heart pounding. Her mouth is utterly dry, her tongue paralyzed by fear. She’s helpless.

 

As if the drive that point home, he whispers, “You know I can take what I want.”

 

Revulsion slams into her with the force of a freight train.

 

Not again.

 

Despite herself, her eyes clench tightly closed. Rey can’t look at him. Her ears remain uncovered, however, and his words continue, insidiously penetrating her consciousness, fated to be indelible.

 

“I know you, Rey. You’re so lonely… So afraid to reach out. At night, you’re desperate to sleep.”

 

She can still feel him looking at her, hungry, devouring her with his gaze.

 

“…And the Resistance. They feel like the family you’ve never had. They’ll only disappoint you. …He’ll only disappoint you.”

 

And then – oh god – his hands are on her.

 

Stop—” she gasps, but it’s futile. Rey can feel the caress like an insect, crawling down the sides of her neck and over her heaving chest. She shudders.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs, his voice too close – everything is too close – and she’s trapped, “I feel it, too.”

 

Finally, she finds her voice. Her eyes snap open so she can glare daggers at him, her rage and fear nearly physically manifest between them. She’s almost surprised it isn’t visible, like a stain.

 

His mouth is a breath from hers, but she doesn’t flinch.

 

“I’m not giving you anything,” she spits through clenched teeth.

 

After a moment’s consideration, the massive man in black draws back from her slowly, his chemically marred expression bearing no emotion. He regards her for a long minute before he reaches for his discarded helmet. Once again, she hears the soft groan of taut leather as he eases the mask back over his head, securing it on either side of his jaw with an unseen mechanism.

 

He raises his head again, looking straight at her through those flat, glass eyes.

 

“We’ll see.”

 

Moving like a shark, he begins to circle her, spiraling ever inward as he observes her from every possible angle, drawing closer once again as he does. It’s maddening, this sense of him being always just on the edges of perception, in her periphery. Rey knows he can attack at any moment – the anticipation of pain is just another tool in his arsenal of torment.

 

She wants to close her eyes against it, she wants to go away and never return, she wants to die before he can take the chance to touch her again, to claim her.

 

There’s movement behind her, the soft clatter of tools being prepped.

 

She refuses to turn and try to look. She won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her struggle. Instead, her mind races furiously, trying desperately to divine a way out before it’s too late. There is no convenient cylinder of caustic liquid this time, no improvised weapon just within reach. Every limb is held fast to the metal slab, locked in place with cuffs controlled by the push of a button. She does have some freedom of movement, though. There’s no restraining belt across her torso, no strap holding her head in place. She’s never been forced to dislocate one of her limbs or fingers escape, but she knows how to do it. With enough force—

 

Faster than a blink, Kylo Ren reappears in front of her, black-gloved hands clutching an IV bag and needle. A quick, panicked glance down to the table at her side shows several syringes also at the ready. He pauses, his manner upright, almost scholarly. As if he’s about to teach her something, exactly as he used to.

 

“I’ve developed something… really quite special, Rey. We’re using a diluted version of this on the local population. It helps – pacify them. For you, well… let’s just say it will take care of your more – rebellious – tendencies. With this—” he pauses, holding the IV bag up to the light, examining the clear liquid inside like it’s a precious gem, “you will finally fulfill your destiny, Rey.”

 

The doctor watches, frozen in terror, as his horrid, blank visage drifts ever closer to her own. Ren’s hands reach for her inner elbow, preparing to slip the needle home into her vein.

 

Oddly, (or perhaps appropriately, given her more than likely impending death) she can’t help the acute regret that aches through her. She was almost there. Rey almost had a family, or something like one. Or she could have. If she’d been brave enough to reach out and accept what Poe had been offering.

 

Oh, fuck this.

 

Without warning (and with all her might) Rey thrusts her head forward and up, aiming like she would head a football. The hardest spot of her skull connects violently with the mouthpiece of his mask, shattering resin, and plastic with a satisfying CRACK.

 

Fragments of the mask rain down over her as blood bursts from her forehead and nose, streaming down her face as he shouts in pain, reeling out of reach. She notes with pained gratification that the mask has cracked diagonally across the front, a large triangular chunk destroyed and gone. His face is bleeding, too, a large split in his lip dripping down into the spaces between his furiously snapping teeth and down his chin.

 

She flashes him a feral grin, casually spitting a generous gob of blood at his feet.

 

Instantly, he lets out an ear-splitting roar, every bit of his unhinged rage suddenly on display. When he finally runs out of breath, he stares at her, air snarling heavily through his clenched teeth. Then, with one final huff, like an aggravated rhino, he turns on his heel and leaves her, the torture box going black as he exits.

 

Rey smiles in the darkness, fist full of newly acquired potential tools for escape.

Notes:

Rey awakens strapped to the same interrogation set-up as Poe. Kylo is there, wearing his mask. They talk for a bit, and when Kylo removes his mask to reveal his face, Rey experiences a flashback to the night at university he assaulted her. It is a vivid and detailed account of the beginning of the assault, stopping at the point where he has overpowered her and forced her legs apart. The flashback is interrupted at that point by Kylo continuing his interrogation, putting his mask back on. At this point, he actually gropes Rey, touching the sides of her neck and her chest. He then prepares to use an unknown drug on Rey in order to pacify her somehow. Before he manages to administer the drug, Rey head-butts him in the face, shattering his mask. He leaves without completing the procedure, and Rey manages to grab some shards of the mask to use to attempt to escape.