When Light Meets Dark - A Reylo Romance

Thirty-six Crates

"It is far more painful to awake from a beautiful slumber and – in that brief period when the continuity of life is still lost to you – to reach across the bed for a hand that is not there."

~E.O. Higgins, Conversations with Spirits

Rey

Three days. It had been three days since I had last seen Kylo. Finn wouldn't agree to me flying off to search for him, and so I'd spent the first couple of days and nights trying to track the fighter he'd used to escape. But he'd bounced the signal around, sending me on a wild goose chase, until it was discovered that the tracking beacon had been disabled long before he had even left Umbara.

Kylo didn't want to be found.

Maybe he was on Akiva, I suggested to Finn. But he said a craft of that size wouldn't be able to travel all that way without stopping to refuel a couple of times. And what reason had he to go back there? Maybe he had gone to confront Snoke by himself, make him pay for all the pain he caused. That was a good reason, the only reason that would justify his leaving me to deal with all this misery and grief on my own. But somehow even that didn't bring me comfort, and the idea that Kylo had somehow been captured or hurt by Snoke had kept me up at night, tossing and turning. Sometimes I would drift off into a distressed sleep, only to awake moments later in a cold sweat, barely able to breathe.

You know I'll never leave you he'd said.

So why, when I needed him the most, was he not there?

Soon I was too physically and emotionally drained to worry anymore. He'll turn up, I kept telling myself, and it was like a mantra that I repeated over and over whenever I began to sink back into the darkness. I tried to keep myself busy, which wasn't hard since there was so much that needed to be done. The Resistance, under it's new leadership, was slowly beginning to put itself back together, like a drugged man rousing himself from sleep. People were moving about, talking to each other, and the hallways seemed more and more alive with voices everyday. When I'd given up my Kylo hunt I'd immediately flung myself into the work. I helped Ertra organise holo meetings with our allies in the Outer Rim, I placed orders for new vessels, I even helped clean tables in the canteen. Anything to take my mind off of his absence.

At that moment I was with C-4PO in the armoury, helping him log some of the new weapons that had just arrived that morning. He walked around stiffly, holding a board with an illuminated screen which formed patches of light on his golden skin. Every so often he pressed a button on the board and muttered a number to himself. I sat perched on a low empty crate, with my own board in hand watching him.

"Is that all of the plasma blasters?" I heard him ask. I nodded. "Fifty crates exactly." I said.

"Are you certain?" he asked again, looking down at his board in concern. "I only logged forty-eight crates."

I let out an exasperated breath and sprung to my feet. "Well I guess we'll have to count them again won't we?" 

I began to move round systematically, counting the crates once more. I could sense C-4PO watching me, although after a while he turned and began to count as well, opening up the occasional crate for inspection. We worked in silence for a couple of minutes before he began to speak.

"You know Master Rey, I haven't seen Kylo Ren for a long time." He had his back to me but his gentle voice cut though the silence like a knife. "Whatever happened to him?"

I didn't respond, keeping my eyes fixed on my board for an unnecessarily long time. He swivelled his head around to look at me.

"He's gone." I said, without looking up.