Blood and Fire: a Reylo Smut Sequel

Author's Note: The events of this story take place over the course of Episode VIII with a slight continuation beyond the end of the film. The reader should be aware that this story has multiple graphic depictions of rough but consensual sex. There are some depictions of violence, and at one point, lots of blood and someone dies (no sex involved in these parts). The author recommends starting with Blood and Snow, the first story of this series. (See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Weakness deserves punishment.

"You have compassion for her."

The words ring in his head, an unwelcome memory.

He is barefoot in the training room, a lightsaber humming angrily in his hands. He weaves it through the air, blocking the bolts fired by a hovering sparring droid. Sweat trickles down his bandaged face and bare chest. His movements are a mix of animal intuition and hard, conditioned reflex as he ducks and slashes. Though he tries to focus on his anger and his present, his mind keeps traveling back into the past, haunted by the Supreme Leader's proclamation.

"You have compassion for her."

Compassion is a dirty word. The statement is an accusation of weakness.

But Snoke was wrong--is wrong--about this. Compassion is not what Kylo Ren feels for Rey. Hatred and lust. Pain and longing. Fury. Desire. These are the feelings she inspires and they are powerful to the point of overwhelming. But compassion is not among them.

After she fled from him on Hoth, Kylo made his way back to the First Order but has yet to have an audience with Snoke. It is his master's way of rebuking him, and it is effective. But it is also giving him time to prepare. When at last he is called into the Supreme Leader's presence, he will be able to keep Snoke in the dark about the details of his time of isolation with Rey.

Snoke has already been informed about where Kylo was and why, that he survived, and that is enough. The Supreme Leader doesn't need to know more. Kylo will keep his memories of Rey deep in the recesses of his mind, buried where they will not be found. The memory of how Rey's taut, warm body felt beneath him. The sound of her crying his name in ecstasy. The pain of her nails raking his back, forceful enough to draw his blood. The smell and the taste of her. All of her.

For reasons he cannot fully explain, Kylo Ren holds these things sacred, and he will not let Snoke have them.

Since Hoth, Kylo has been working at double intensity to find and snuff out the Resistance, the anger of Rey's rejection driving him forward like a scourge. Through it all, at the back of his mind, is a sense of her through their strange Force bond. It is subtle now, as though she is very far away. But distant though she may be, she is always there, a sweet and burning torture.

He should have killed her when he had the chance. But he felt... affection for her. Another dirty word. It would be better if he could take care of her the way he had Han Solo. But it wasn't merely affection that had stayed his hand. No, it was her potential. Her raw power. And the idea that she could be turned to the dark side. Together they would be truly unstoppable. They would bend the galaxy to their will, possess it as intimately--and as thoroughly--as he had possessed her so many times on Hoth. Together they could make the galaxy kneel. And beg. How sweet her begging had been...

His thoughts have distracted him, and he is yanked back to the present as an electric bolt from the sparring droid sears his flesh. Of course he has programmed the droid to fire bolts at a higher intensity than standard maximum. He wants to feel real pain when he fails. But it also makes him angry and so he swings at the droid. His blade is a blur of fiery red, screaming as it rips through the air, and the droid drops to the deck in pieces.

"Sir," calls a voice from the door.

Rage flashes through Kylo like a lightning strike. He left orders not to be interrupted. He will have the man's head...

The officer standing at the entrance to the training room shrinks under Kylo's glare but does not retreat. "Sir, we found them! The Resistance base! We are en route. And--" he hesitates, as though knowing the next piece of news is not favorable. "The Supreme Leader has requested your presence. Immediately."

The victory of finding the Resistance is dimmed by the summons. It sours his mood further to see that, evidently, everyone is aware that he has fallen out of favor with the Supreme Leader. He switches off the saber and stalks out of the room, forcing the man to scurry out his way to avoid being stepped on. Instead of going directly to Snoke's throne room, he returns to his quarters to change. It is a small act of defiance, to delay his arrival, but neither is he willing to present himself before his master barefoot and shirtless.

When he arrives at the Supreme Leader's vaulted chamber, General Hux is completing his report as Snoke lounges on the throne, seeming pleased. It makes Kylo grit his teeth as he waits for Hux to leave. The man casts him a smug, derisive smile as he departs, his boots clicking cheerily on the glossy black deck. Kylo does not deign to respond. Hux is beneath him.

He approaches the throne and kneels, waiting for his master to speak.

"Do you wonder why I keep a rabid cur in such a place of power?" Snoke asks, sensing Kylo's feelings about Hux with amusement. "The cur's weakness, properly manipulated, can be a sharp tool... How's your wound?"

The wound Rey gave him, of course. It healed poorly while on Hoth. Bandages from a corrective surgery stripe his face, hidden beneath his helmet.

"It's nothing," he says, hearing the flat, distorted version of his voice emitted by his helmet's speakers. He clenches, waiting tensely for questions he does not want to answer.

"The mighty Kylo Ren," Snoke says, rising from his throne, sarcasm and mockery dripping off the words. "When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see. Raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special." Snoke approaches where Kylo kneels, his voice soaring and expansive. "The potential of your bloodline. A new Vader." Then he pauses and his tone shifts ominously. "Now... I fear I was mistaken."

It is worse than Kylo expected. He imagined interrogation, abuse for his failures, punishment. But not this. Not absolute rejection. He looks up in surprise.

"I've given everything I have to you. To the dark side."

Snoke sneers. "Take that ridiculous thing off."

Reluctantly, Kylo obeys, exposing his face to the Supreme Leader.

"Yes, there it is," rasps Snoke, examining him. "You have too much of your father's heart in you, young Solo."

Snoke's use of the name that Kylo has long since rejected, a name that the Supreme Leader has forbidden anyone to speak, is the stab of a hot knife, and it is meant to be. Kylo feels his anger flare.

"I killed Han Solo," he snaps. "When the moment came, I didn't hesitate."

His master's voice becomes a growl. "And look at you! The deed split your spirit to the bone. You were unbalanced. Bested by a girl who had never held a lightsaber. Then you allowed yourself to be captured by that pitiful Resistance and marooned on a backwater planet, where you shirked your duties and played house while the war churned on without you! You failed!"

Fury brings Kylo to his feet, but he is halted abruptly by the Force lightning that leaps from his master's hand. It throws him backwards and he collapses to the deck panting, welcoming the pain in silence. Pain is the price of failure. Yet still, he seethes with anger.

"Skywalker lives," shouts Snoke. "The seed of the Jedi Order lives." He turns his back on Kylo to resume his throne. "As long as he does, hope lives in the galaxy. I thought you would be the one to snuff it out. Alas, you're no Vader. You're just a child in a mask."

With this pronouncement, Kylo Ren is dismissed. He knows better than to protest and departs in silence, filled with pain, fury, and something else, something so much worse: jealousy.

In the lift back to his quarters, the Supreme Leader's words continue to ring in his mind. Skywalker lives. Rey has gone in search of him; he can feel it in his bones. She will try to persuade his uncle to return from obscurity, to fight, and probably... to train her as a Jedi. The idea makes Kylo shake with unexpressed rage. Rey should be his student! HIS! His to train and shape in the ways of the Force, to make into the most glorious and powerful weapon ever known. Instead, she has gone to seek out that old, craven fool. Skywalker will waste her. Kylo knows Rey's power. Her potential. Her anger. And he knows Skywalker too. Luke will fear her, just as Luke feared Kylo Ren. The bastard. The fool!

The fury is too much. It boils over. He smashes his helmet into the wall. Again and again and again, his blood a molten river of sulfurous wrath, as he smashes both the helmet and the lift wall into oblivion.

At the back of his mind, he realizes that the First Order fleet must have arrived at its destination by now. It would be time to engage the Resistance. There would be other, bigger things to destroy. He needs that. He needs something to kill.

The lift doors slide open.

"Prepare my ship," he barks at the officers standing there.

He strides past them and down the corridor to make ready for battle. Anger courses through him still. It is an old friend. It makes him strong. Powerful. It assures him that he will have his revenge. He will redeem himself in his master's eyes by putting an end to the Resistance, and he will find Rey and bring her to heel. Or she will die at the end of his lightsaber, just as Han Solo did.

Chapter 2: A clash of wills.

An island. They have come to the end of the path that leads them to Luke Skywalker, exiled Jedi Knight, and it is... an island. Not just any island: her island. An island she has seen so many times before in dreams and visions, thrusting itself toward the sky in craggy defiance, harsh in its stark, alien beauty.

As she and Chewy bring the Millennium Falcon to a gentle landing, she realizes that it has been a long time since she dreamt of it. Now, it is Hoth and Kylo Ren that occupy her thoughts at night when she cannot sleep. She remembers the moment, a moment from what feels like another lifetime, when Kylo Ren dug the island out of her mind. When he was nothing more to her than a terrifying stranger. The memory makes her shiver.

A tortuous and crumbling stone stair leads to the top of the mountain island. Her heart pounds in her chest as she climbs it. The pounding is not merely from the physical exertion but from the excitement, and terror, of reaching her goal. Each step brings her closer to an abyss, an abyss she must cross to save the Resistance, to bring Master Skywalker back, and possibly... to become a Jedi.

Step.

Step.

Only Skywalker can teach her how to fight against the darkness. She must learn to resist Kylo Ren, who she feels pulling at her, even now, though he is painfully far away.

Will she have the courage to admit to Skywalker that she might be carrying Kylo Ren's child? That she has not only felt his caress in the darkness but that of the dark side itself? Will Skywalker react with horror and turn her away if she admits it?

Her heart catches in her throat, and for a moment, she has to stop. Fear runs like ice in her veins, threatening to overwhelm her. She breathes deeply, calming herself, steeling her nerves. Gathering her courage, she sets her jaw, lifts her chin, and continues.

Step.

Step.

All the way to the top.

Skywalker is standing motionless in the field as if he had been waiting for her. She can't believe it. He's really there! Eagerness and hope speed her feet. He says nothing as she approaches, only stares at her out from under the edge of a dingy cowl. When she is close, she extends the lightsaber to him, his lightsaber from so long ago. He pulls back his hood to reveal his face. His icy blue stare freezes any words she might have spoken, and they die upon her lips.

He takes the lightsaber. After examining it carefully, he looks her dead in the eye, as though daring her to protest, and throws it over his shoulder. Over the edge of the cliff. Rey's eyes go wide in disbelief. She is filled with molten shock and horror that quickly hardens to anger.

So begins their battle of wills.

He doesn't want her there. Luke Skywalker doesn't want anyone it seems. He wants to be a hermit, to hide, to be left alone, to divorce himself from reality and, especially, from the calls of those who need him. He is full of fear, and anger, and despair. So much like Kylo Ren. Lost but without the darkness. She can see these things in him even as he tries to hide behind his wall. He thinks himself stubborn, but he doesn't know her.

He will.

She is not leaving the island without him. She says as much. And so, she becomes his shadow.

She follows him as he goes about his days on the island. He alternately ignores and glowers at her. He tries to repulse her by drinking milk directly from the teats of sea creatures, and once, he even urinates in front of her. She is repulsed, but it does not weaken her resolve.

As she follows him about the island, she is haunted by a sense of déjà vu. She has seen all of this before, even the strange and ancient tree. It pulls at her like an ache in her soul each time she passes it. Eventually, she is persuaded to relax her vigil and respond to its call. Breaking away from Skywalker, she walks into the whispering mists and approaches the gnarled tree, so old it is more a creature than plant. Inside, she finds a collection of ancient texts and a disorienting sense of... belonging. It makes her shiver.

Skywalker surprises her by following after her, as though he feels the strangeness of her presence there too. It leads him to speak to her, to question her, for the first time in all these days. Who is she? Where is she from? Why is she here?

Why indeed?

She deflects from the true reason, terrified to admit that she fears there is a life growing inside of her conceived by a monster. That she fears what it will become. That she fears what she will become without Skywalker's help. She knows she needs help or she will fall into darkness and destroy all that she once loved. But she can't possibly say that.

"The Resistance sent me," she says. "We need your help. The First Order has become unstoppable."

"Why are you here?" Skywalker presses, his icy blue gaze piercing her.

She pauses for a long time, trying to find an answer that is still the truth but not her hidden shame. "Something inside me has always been there," she says, haltingly. "But now it's awake, and I'm afraid. I do not know what it is... or what to do with it. And I need help."

"You need a teacher." He turns away. "I can't teach you."

Skywalker's words make her angry. "Why not?" she snaps. "I've seen your daily routine. You're not busy."

"I will never train another generation of Jedi," he says and stalks away from her, out of the tree. "I came to this island to die. It's time for the Jedi to end."

Stubborn bastard.

Still, she refuses to give up. That night she still keeps her vigil, sleeping on a bench outside Skywalker's hut rather than in the Millennium Falcon. She dreams of Kylo Ren.

They are together in the inky, formless darkness. She can see nothing, but what she cannot see is made up with other sensations: the weight of his body pressing down upon hers, his tongue running over her skin, and the sound of her own labored breathing.

They shred each others' clothes like paper, clinging to each other in the dark. Their mouths press together with a wet hunger that consumes them both. And when he thrusts himself into her she cries out, needing and hating him, her fear of him stoking her desire.

"You are mine," he whispers in her ear. "Mine."

"Never," she bites back, even as her arms pull him tighter.

"You are mine, and you belong to the dark," he says, driving himself into her harder.

She is too close to her ecstasy now to rebut him, her body wound so tight that it is hard to even breathe. The feeling of his strength as he moves against her is a tight and terrifying pleasure. He drives himself into her, over and over, and the tension in her body ratchets her tighter and tighter. She feels herself begin to crest, and she cries out his name, begging him to go harder still. He does as he is asked.

Her body begins to seize and twitch, the tension they have been frantically building breaking like a dam beneath a raging flood. She is lost in the pleasure of it. He lets out a deep, throaty moan, and follows her over the edge, thrusting hard and uneven, then collapses on top of her.

"Mine," he whispers.

"Never."

Rey is ripped abruptly back to full consciousness by a new voice.

"Tomorrow at dawn," it says.

It is still dark, and Rey is disoriented. As the last vestiges of sleep fall from her, she realizes that it is Skywalker speaking to her, and she jerks her head up to look at him.

"Three lessons," he says, towering over her bench. "I will teach you the ways of the Jedi... and why they need to end."

She collapses back onto the bench in grievous relief, violently resisting the urge to cry.

Later, Rey learns that it was R2D2 who finally convinced Skywalker. Who knows how long their battle of wills would have continued without the intervention of the little droid, as her friends and the Resistance itself remained imperiled.

Rey is hopeful that this signals the turning of the tide, that Skywalker will eventually agree to join her. And the idea that he will teach her... she grasps at it as desperately as a spaced woman for an airlock. Not only does she long to learn, but she longs to learn from a Jedi about the light side of the Force. Because there is another teacher and other lessons waiting for her. And that sooner or later, she knows that she will give in to him, all the way in, if she doesn't get help. The thought makes her shudder.

Chapter 3: Bound.

Kylo Ren sits quietly as the medical droid treats his wound. He has turned off the anesthetic function but despite the pain, he is thinking of General Organa. Leia. Mother. She is almost certainly dead, sucked out into space with so many shards of glass when the bridge of her flagship burst. He feels both immense pain and a certain sense of relief, but the fact that it was not he who pulled the trigger... That has lit a burning rage inside of him. It should have been him. He was weak. He is weak. It is no wonder that Snoke has rejected him.

There is a sudden moment of disorientation, like feeling lightheaded. Then a sensation of someone else in the room. Of... her. Her presence hits him in a crashing wave. Rey. He turns his gaze, and she is there, sitting across the room from him. His mind reels. How could she have gotten aboard his ship? He cannot imagine. She appears just as startled as he is.

Unsurprisingly, savage creature that she is, her first impulse is to fire a blaster at him. He flinches, but when he looks down at himself, he is unmarked, the bolt never landing. He returns his gaze to her face, and it is a closed mask of anger. She bolts from the room, and he moves quickly, following her into the hall. He looks one way down the corridor. Nothing. He turns and... there she is. Facing him with feet planted wide and that same fixed look of anger.

Reflexively, he extends a hand and tries to push into her mind, to command her.

"You will bring Luke Skywalker to me."

But it, like her blaster, has no effect. He lowers his hand with an aggravated wave, and shifts his attention. Through their bond, he can feel her fear, her conflict. Her desire. It has been weeks since she abandoned him on Hoth. The reminder of her rejection invokes his anger even as the sight of her kindles his need. But he carefully schools his mind to address the mystery of her presence. He can see her, but it seems like she's not really there. Could she be projecting herself? No.