11 | the carnage that we left behind

"DID YOU JUST BRING ME HERE TO GLOAT? TO SHOW THAT THE FIRST ORDER HAS FINALLY OVERTAKEN AND DEFEATED THEIR ENEMIES? "

STAR DESTROYER--

Kyra couldn't tell if it had been hours or days after Silas' death.

She had been dragged from the throne room the moments following the end of the transmission that had broken her yet again, the feeling of Silas' lifeless hand slipping away from hers etched into her memory. It replayed in her head over and over, a haunting reminder of her failure- another loss to carry with her.

It was like she was a hollow corpse of the person she once was  in the cell room she was locked in, laid on her side as she stared dully at the monotonous gray walls she was trapped inside. Kyra hadn't slept in what had felt like forever, her body constantly twisting with a nausea she couldn't stomach. She hadn't eaten in what felt like days, her body not being able to keep anything down for long, even if the First Order only unceremoniously dropped a single meal into her cell every day.

Kyra couldn't sleep. How could she? The backs of her eyelids were scarred with the image of her friend's eyes going lifeless, his body sprawled across the pristine floor in which Snoke ruled. She couldn't breathe– couldn't speak of the horrors that flashed through her brain.

The look of acceptance in Silas's eyes as he watched the gun trained on his head, his hands gently wrapping around Kyra's as a sign of some sort of morbid reassurance. Silas had seemed too calm, too composed to even be confronting his death in that moment. He was too– something wasn't right.

It wasn't right that he was dead.

But he was.

And she had killed him.

The hesitant man inside of the First Order who always put others– no, put Kyra before anything else. He guarded her from the worst of the words hurled at her as a young woman, understanding her position and what she was forced into from the moment that they had gotten remotely close. The mask of duty and professionalism for the Order wiped itself away quickly when he was around her and Fox, the humble and caring older brother role taking its place in the blink of an eye.

The scoff and roll of his eyes whenever Kyra and Fox would finagle something illegal to do on the ship ride back to the First Order, wherever they were stationed was gone. The gentle way that he would wrap her wounds and let her rest against his shoulder when the "training" from Ren was gone. The man who had been a guiding light, a reminder of the good even in the darkest of places, was gone.

And she had done it.

Silas, the man who was her rock through every horrible thing she had done in the First Order, was gone. No more than a distant memory and a pawn easily discarded in the game the First Order was playing. There was no one there to soothe her broken conscience, to dry her neverending tears, comfort her after her nightmares.

She had surrendered that the day she left the Resistance behind, surrendered even further after refusing to do what the First Order requested in order to save her friend. And it had all amounted to nothing but an even worse cage than the last in the Order, and the foolish hopes of trying to outsmart the First Order and escape with both of their lives was dead.

The mere thought of Silas' body laying lifeless without anyone to care inside of that room made her sick.

If she really wanted to try, Kyra could've guessed how many days it had been. But she didn't care. It felt like a sickening sort of irony that the First Order had resigned her to a fate of rotting away in a cell, after being one of the symbols of secret rebellion against the regime for years.

Now she would die in that secrecy.

The young woman had no desire to move when she heard the familiar sound of the prison cell sliding open, assuming that it was just another fruitless attempt to try and pull some information out of her through another physical attempt like they had done a day after Silas' death. Or it could've been Deftrine, who somehow, after discovering that she was a part of the fabled Skywalker lineage, crawled out of the sewers to come and try his experiments once again on her, like he had a couple of times since the days began to blur together.

None of it mattered to her anymore.

The First Order had cornered the Resistance, who she was unsure if they had even escaped. She had traded herself for someone who the First Order never had an intention of letting go, something that Kyra should have seen coming. Her friends had watched her go, and Poe-

Kyra didn't even want to think about the man that she loved. She had left him behind, incapacitated, after finally confessing the feelings that she had felt. She had left it all behind just to be the one to inflict the killing blow on a man she considered her brother. She had made a sacrifice, a foolish sacrifice,

"Get up." A sharp voice that had to be some lieutenant on an inevitable power trip spoke, interjecting the continuous spiral of thoughts that consumed Kyra's mind. "Master Ren wants you in the throne room. With the Supreme Leader gone, he's the highest rank. You do not want to keep him waiting."

Seeing no response from the former assassin, the lieutenant signaled for two stormtroopers to haul Kyra up, the woman fighting back slightly as she was pulled up from the position that she was in. Even with an inhibited ability and malnutrition she put up a decent fight for a moment, but was jostled into the place quickly.

"I don't like to repeat myself. We are not to keep Master Ren waiting." The lieutenant sneered, Kyra just giving him a glare with lifeless eyes as best as she could. It felt as if a part of her soul was broken, apathy all she could convey as she was dragged outside of her cell. She swore that she could see the lieutenant falter as he stared into her almost lifeless eyes, almost making her laugh out loud. Was he expecting more of a fight? Something more of the legendary Solani, rumored to have helped destroy the very weapon she had been tasked in helping create?

The hallways around them echoed with memories of moments prior, the walk being akin to a death march seemingly familiar. The eerie silence was only masked by the synchronous click of boots against the linoleum floor creating the harmony of the march of death. This time though, there was no hope of something better- a respite throughout the darkness.

It was just Kyra, all by herself.

The neverending hallways gave way to the familiar bleeding red of the throne room, the large throne where Snoke used to sit now unoccupied, Kylo Ren sitting a couple of steps below where his Master once stood. It was strange to see such a gaping absence of power inside of the room, but any ideas Kyra had about a lack of power vanished when he slowly looked up, his mask emitting nothing but a cold glare. His gaze pointed forward at the entrance of Kyra and the lieutenant as he heard them stop, he didn't react when he saw the state that the young Skywalker was in.

"Thank you, lieutenant. You can leave her there." Ren nodded at the First Order troopers, the two unceremoniously letting go of Kyra before leaving the room, the lieutenant on their tail. The huge throne room was then left with just the two Skywalker descendants.

A faint click and decompression of air caused Kyra to raise an eyebrow as she was quickly dropped from the grasp of the two troopers tasked with escorting her. Shaken by the lack of support, Kyra fell to her knees, looking behind at the two troopers with a glare as they walked out. There was no way she could fully gather her composure in time before the young Sith lord started to stalk towards her. Her arm roughly grabbed by Kylo Ren, dragging her back up, she was pulled towards the stairs leading to the throne. He wasn't wearing his helmet, a drastic change from the usual pretenses that she would see him under. It scared Kyra, seeing the slight expressions that signified there was some form of humanity still left inside of the monster of a man.

"There are reports that your Resistance friends have begun to rally themselves." The man noted, looking down at the shorter woman to gauge any reaction from her. He paused for a moment, seeing no shift in expression from the woman as she attempted to bring herself to stare at her cousin with a steely cold rage-like mask. When he saw none, a curious look crossed his face, evident to Kyra in the way he so eerily tilted his head at her.

"You don't care."

No response.

"Even if I said that our radars have gotten hits that they're headed straight towards this ship?" Kylo questioned, seeing the expression on Kyra's face slightly shift to one of shock, barely hidden under the lifeless look she had. "Ah. There it is. You most certainly weren't expecting that."

"Why did you bring me here?" Kyra's voice cracked, her voice obviously strained after not using it for days. "Did you just bring me here to gloat? To show that the First Order has finally overtaken and defeated their enemies? Why did you-"

The sound of an explosion just outside the ship echoed throughout the throne room, a wicked smile painting itself across Kylo Ren's face as the room began to glow with the flashing yellow lights of alarm, the warning sirens beginning its call within the ship. The blood red of the throne room began to flicker ever so slightly, almost as if the rumored attack that Ren was bragging about was occurring at that very moment.

"Because I had an inkling of a feeling that they were here." Kylo Ren sat down on the comfort of the throne, dragging Kyra all but with him, shoving her down on the step right below him. Hearing a sharp wince come from the woman as she was jostled back to the ground, her body already storied with bruises and barely healing injuries. "Coming straight to you. After sending them the broadcast of the aftermath of your friend's unfortunate-"

"You sick fucking bastard." Kyra spat, the idea of the entire Resistance watching her be forced to kill her best friend making her even more nauseous than before. They had all seen it. Fox and Poe and– they all knew. They knew the kind of person that she was, what she had done. Oh god, Fox had seen. "You had no-" Her sentence was cut off with the raise of a hand, a lack of oxygen finding its way into her lungs as Ren used the Force to silence her.

"This wasn't the time for your response."  The Sith lord gritted out, seeing the young woman gasp for air for a few more moments before releasing Kyra, watching as she hurled over, trying to force air back into her lungs. "After we sent them that broadcast, I was hoping that we would motivate them to come and retrieve you. Your screams of anguish and a stormtrooper vital to the Resistance dead on the ground seemed to do the trick. While the idea of Skywalker coming might be a slim one, your friends who were with him are more than likely to drop everything to come and rescue you. Especially if my suspicions are correct."

"What suspicions?"

"Han wasn't on that ship with you when you made the decision to give yourself up, was he?" The man wasn't asking with the intention of an answer- it was obvious that he already knew. Seeing Kyra give no inclination of an answer, Ren continued on. "No. He went off with someone from your little group of rebels- probably the scavenger, given that I could not sense her on the ship when you decided to so foolishly surrender yourself to the First Order- to try and convince Luke Skywalker to come back."

"You really think Han, your own father, would come back for me?" Kyra laughed, no emotion in her voice as she spoke. Her heart dropped even further at the idea that Han had seen what she had done. It was a reminder of who she was, who she truly was, before Kyra had ever been seen as anything more than a fabled assassin, evident in what Han had seen. "You have to be fooling yourself if you think that he would choose me over his best friend of years."

Ren paused, a wicked smile on his face beginning to show as he turned away from Kyra. "I don't have to be fooling myself." He noted, grinning even wider as he looked out of the one visible window inside of the throne room, seeing the Millenium Falcon flying just outside of the ship, trying to help X-Wings shake off the TIE fighters that were attempting to take them down. "Look for yourself."

Her eyes locked onto the window inside of the throne room, Kyra simply stared as she watched the Falcon fly around in front of them, her heart dropping to the floor. The Resistance had been played by the First Order, preyed upon by the fact that her weakest moment had been on display for them all. And she knew who had to have rallied the troops to get them back- and the idea of Poe coming to face Kylo Ren scared her most of all.

The dream that had haunted her that fateful day they had left the base now joined the terrifying flashes of sights that played in Kyra's mind as she went silent, having nothing else to say to Kylo Ren. What could she say? He had read them like a book, played them for fools.

And Kyra was the pawn in the middle of it all.

"And with their inevitable storming of the ship, now we wait." Kylo Ren scaled the last few steps to sit upon the throne that Kyra was sure would soon be his, the man looking down at Kyra with a hint of glee as he saw her heart drop further and further in her chest, mind filled with despair.

"Wait for what?" She croaked out, terrified to know what exactly he was planning. So far, everyone had all but played directly into Ren's hands, and it seemed as if the events unfolding in front of her would be no different.

"For you to witness the death of the Resistance and those you care about before I kill off the remaining line of the Skywalkers and the Ceydeas in one fell swoop."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It was far too easy to get onto the First Order ship, and that should've been the first sign that something was eerily wrong. It hadn't been a hard fight, Fox and Poe being able to sneak their small X-Wing into the Hangar Bay with little concern, Han, Chewie, and Rey still providing backup outside until more of the Resistance forces could rally at their location.

The halls echoed with the sirens warning that the ship was compromised, the attack that the Resistance was currently orchestrating evident as lights fizzled on the ship. Blasters raised, Poe and Fox shared a look of understanding as they heard the whoosh of the hangar bay doors open, eyes trained for anyone that would be a threat.

The path was clear, almost as if troopers had been warned against even coming near the hangar. There weren't many ships there barring larger tankers and cargo ships that wouldn't be useful in battle, and the two men thought that they had struck the jackpot. In such an important ship like this Star Destroyer so evidently was, no Hangar Bay was left unutilized. At least that was what Fox had told his fellow Resistance pilot as they looked for the best entryways.

"What is going on?" Fox muttered, his guard going up even higher as he stared at the eerily clear hallway in front of them. This was so unlike the First Order– with a high security risk like Kyra and a ranking member of the Order like Ren, the level of activity would be off the charts. "I–"

"Have a bad feeling about this." Poe interrupted, seeing Fox give a slight nod of agreement out of the corner of his eye. His mind was already a blurred mess of mixed emotions, fear running rampant in his veins as the last hologram he had seen of Kyra replayed in his mind over and over again. "We should've at least run into a squadron by now."

"If not two." Fox agreed, raising his blaster even more as they reached a corner, clearing the space quickly to still find no one. "This level should never be abandoned, especially given an attack. There are so many weapons and other things for the First Order to utilize in a battle that–" He stopped as he stepped into the wider hallway, seeing the path to the elevator clear of any sort of obstacles. "It's a trap."

"We knew it was a trap from the second they sent that hologram."

"I know." Fox sighed, his hand anxiously patting the side of his leg, feeling the familiar feeling of the small knife that he shared with both Silas and Kyra fit snug against his leg. The object was almost burning him, telling him to find Kyra and hold the young woman who was the closest thing to a sister to him in his arms and never let her go. To reassure her that none of this was her fault, and that the blood that she inevitably felt about Silas' death was not on her hands.

"But this is something else entirely. It's almost as if–" He failed to find the words to describe the sort of mind game that he was sure the First Order was playing on the Resistance, the cruel manner in which the First Order tried to break down and ruin the spirit of those they had an agenda with indescribable. "It's almost as if it's a message, and I can't tell if it's for us–"

"Or for Kyra." Poe realized, his eyes widening as he muttered out a string of curses, his heart tearing at the fact that he hadn't tried harder to stop Kyra from leaving, to stop her from making the decision that she had made. For the better good of the Resistance meant nothing to Poe if it meant that she wasn't there beside him. "We need to find where she's being held."

"Normally the detention centers are a few floors up. But I expect those to be heavily guarded, unlike what we've seen down here."

"After what we've seen down here, I don't know what to expect."

"Poe, Fox. Reinforcements have arrived." Han's voice crackled through the small devices that Fox and Poe both had on hand. Seeming somewhat calm and collected over the communicator, the veteran smuggler seemed to mask his nerves well as he spoke. "We're coming to you."

"Good." Poe sighed, tilting his head as he heard the communicator that he had with Rey and Han buzz to life, gesturing to Fox that they should wait for the rest of their group to try and take down the next few levels to get to Kyra (and inevitably, Kylo Ren and the First Order). "We're going to need all the help we can get."

"Did you run into trouble?" Rey rushed out, worry filling her voice as the two heard Finn's voice in the background attempting to communicate from the weapons bay of the Falcon. "Are either of your hurt or did you–"

"We're fine. But it's quiet. Eerily so." Fox interrupted, a scolding expression painted across his face as he tried to silently tell Poe that worrying the young Jedi-in-training more wasn't going to help anyone in this situation. "We knew it was a trap, but this is–"

"It's a message." Han finished for the former stormtrooper, the two both on the same page. "I heard you. We're getting close to the cargo hangar we saw the two of you land inside of. We'll regroup in a few moments. Keep those hallways clear for us and we'll sort this out."

The two men moved back to the point of divergence in the hallway, waiting for the four in the Falcon to regroup with them. The more firepower meant a better shot of getting out of here with everyone alive, and with what Kyra had already lost in the past week, neither man was willing to allow the woman to lose anything more.

Hearing the doors whoosh open, Poe instinctively raised his blaster, Fox taking a quick peek around the corner to see Han standing in the doorway. Both men lowered their blasters as Han, followed by Chewie, Rey, and Finn, caught up to where they were. "So it's a trap and a message all rolled into one." The smuggler addressed the two men, seeing Fox nod in agreement with his statement.

"For who, we don't know."

"Well, we better find Kai before it becomes obvious who exactly the message is for." Finn spoke up, seeing the group go still for a moment, not wanting to waste any time. While he didn't know the woman as closely as Fox or Poe, it was obvious from their time wandering through the Jakkuian desert that losing those close to her was something the woman would never be able to handle– at least not alone.

"Detention level is two floors up. We should start there and expect a fight back for our girl. I'm hoping that the little message that Ren sent was just motivation to draw us out, and he is off doing whatever leadership needs him to be doing." Fox dismissed, turning to Rey as she instinctively reached towards the saber that rested on her belt. "I have a feeling he'll be looking for a rematch of whatever happened the last time you, Kyra, and Finn fought him."

"I wouldn't expect anything less." Rey's face soured with disgust, grabbing the blade and holding it in her hand, the saber now her primary weapon to be used in the situation. "Except this time, we'll be more than ready for whatever games and whatever agenda he has planned for us."

Moving down the empty hallway to the elevator, the six fit snugly into the machine, with Rey and Fox standing at the front of the group, the Force User and former First Order trooper having the most information and best weapons to protect the rest of the group. Hearing the elevator whirl to life, the doors dinging open a few seconds later, Rey ignited her saber as the doors slid open, seeing a singular squadron of troopers standing just down the hallway.

"They're here!" A trooper exclaimed, raising his blaster and beginning to fire. Fox began to fire back in response, knowing exactly what weak points inside of the storm trooper's armor to target that would immobilize the trooper to ensure that they would not be a problem for the Resistance. Hearing footsteps to their left, Rey turned with a look of determination and fury on her face as she saw another squadron of troopers come to face the Resistance group.

"Fire!"

The familiar hum of a lightsaber combating the bouncing sound of blasters echoing back at the weapons that fired them was all that the group could hear and see, Rey fending off the squadron to the left as Poe and Finn went on the offensive behind her. Han and Chewie, flanking the right side, moved to quickly shut the doorway that would allow for the group to be overtaken on three different sides, seeing Fox dismantle a single squadron on his own straight ahead.

"The cells should be to the left." Fox called out as the cacophony died down, nudging his head towards where Rey had immobilized or incapacitated the squadron of troopers with the help of Poe and Finn. "I'm not sure which cell will be the one that they're keeping her in, but the odds of it being one of the higher max ones is likely. Those are–"

"Towards the end of the hall." Finn interrupted, seeing Fox give a small look of surprise and gratitude at the same time. "I worked a bit on this Star Destroyer. It's formatted a little bit differently than the rest due to its importance to the First Order. They wanted the most difficult route to escape for those prisoners, as that cell block leads to another hallway that is close to the central part of the ship, where the most patrols are."

"Chewie and I will watch the hallways here. Rey, you and Finn go with Poe and Fox since one of you has a–" Han gestured to the glowing lightsaber inside of Rey's hand as if that spoke for itself. "And Finn has a semblance of an idea of how this place is laid out. It makes more sense if we're here. The kid is gonna wanna see you two–" He nodded at Fox and Poe, "First, and the other two are good backup."

"Come on." Poe moved to the left, towards the row of cells that he saw that lined the next hallway. "The more time that we spend here waiting, the higher chance of something going wrong." Hearing three different sets of footsteps behind him as he moved towards the cells further down, blaster raised, Poe felt his heart squeezing, mind racing with all of the different what ifs.

Moving down the hallway even further, there seemed to be row after row after row of cells, each block numbered with different letters scrawled across the small plaque that was to the right of each door. Eyes scanning the little plaques, Poe was searching for a sign or some sort of indication that Kyra was inside of one of these cells, hoping that she would be exactly where the Resistance had gambled she would be. He wanted to scream at her, wrap her in a hug and never let her leave his sight again, and just see Kyra, know that she was okay and wasn't a puppet for the First Order to use for their agenda anymore.

To see the woman that he loved, folded over someone she was forced to kill, someone that she had given up their life for, traded everything, sacrificed everything for broke a part of Poe as the hologram replayed inside of his mind. That dead look and the stark realization that lit up Kyra's face– and the look of defeat and lack of spark that he knew defined the woman that he loved chilled him down to his very core.

He never wanted to see that look on her face again.

"Poe!" Fox called out, making the man come to a halt as the former stormtrooper next to Rey stopped in front of a specific cell door, halfway between where the end of the hallway was and where they had expected Kyra to be held. "This numbering– who was being kept here–" He paused, Fox's heart breaking as he realized that Silas and Kyra had been kept together, in some kind of twisted reunion before ripping one of the two from the galaxy entirely. "It's Silas' code. And next to it–"

Poe rushed over to the other side of the hallway, seeing the lettering and the small "s" that had been scratched into the plaque next to it, indicating that the two had been kept together. Slowly lowering his blaster as he took in a shuddering deep breath, Poe turned to look at Fox and Finn, who were standing to his right. "How do we–"

"This." Fox finished for the Resistance pilot, holding up a small black card that he had evidently snagged off of one of the stormtroopers that lay unconscious or incapacitated behind them at the beginning of the hallway. "It's a prison guard's key. So if we tap it–"

The doors to the cell slid open in response, the silence that came from inside of the cell and the dark-lit room indication enough of what was– and for that matter, who– wasn't inside of the cell that they had fought to find and open. Eyes scanning the room for any sign of Kyra, all that Poe could find was a slim black cylinder that was the twin to the communicator he had seen inside of Han's hands.

Carefully stepping inside of the room, his heart shattering more as he saw the small blood stains and the evident amount of stray bandages (if he could even call them that, they were pieces of cloth that had frayed and become so tarnished they were unusable) scattered across the room. It was evident that she had been here, at some point in time, but was no longer there. It was another part of the game, another part of the message the First Order was sending.

Taking a deep breath as he leaned down and took the small black cylindrical device into his grasp, Poe's hands shaking ever so slightly, he closed his eyes as he moved to exit the room once again. His mind was already racing with the possibilities of what could have happened to Kyra inside of the room, what she had to endure with Silas, and what she had to endure without him.

It made him sick.

"What is it?" Finn questioned, his face thick with worry as he saw the Resistance pilot look around the room with a sense of finality as he took a step backwards as he removed himself from the room. The look in Poe's eyes was one of fear, and of uncertainty of all of the horrors that had occurred to Kyra– and what was to come for both the Resistance and her.

"She's with him." Poe's face drained of all color as he turned to the rest of the group, his back facing the empty room that had nothing but the small smears of blood that indicated the meager signs of life that had occupied the room prior to the Resistance's arrival.

"Kyra is with Kylo Ren."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

well well well

if it isn't the star wars brainrot back while i'm abroad looky here

so i have like.... a lot of the rise of skywalker written i just didn't want to touch chapters ten and eleven and now i am very evidently over that hurdle given the fact that this chapter is 5000 WORDS long. which i was expecting a cute little 3.5k chapter because sometimes star wars is hard to write especially with a split chapter and it's build up but somehow the angst gods spoke to me today and gave you this

in case you didn't know, i am a full time college/uni student studying abroad rn and i definitely should be enjoying the country i'm in and focusing on school but sometimes you'll get these little gems and i just think that's so cute and slay, but please don't expect much i feel like today is an exception cause i'm sick with a cold

some of the next chapter is written but idk when that's happening i am so sorry pookies check my instagram or announcement board and you'll get a better idea! i'm also active in the wattpad's realest discord server so you know you might be able to see the chapters get cooked live there (if you want the link dm me i am a mod for the server!)

ok i think that's it thank you all SO much for your support it truly means the world i love you all okay byeeee