The Moon's Lies
Summary: Kylo Ren x named!Reader. It was never going to be black or white, Light or Dark, friend or foe. Who wouldn't let the galaxy burn to keep their loved ones safe?
Warnings: 18+, Murder/"execution," graphic violence, unspoken threat of bodily harm, twisted morals, Kylo Ren being himself
Masterlist
Canon Divergence Notes: There is no Rey. Finn is the destined Jedi, and he leaves the scar on Ren’s face during the climactic fight on Starkiller Base. The only original canon kept after TFA is the destined Jedi (Finn) leaving to find Luke and Snoke pushing Kylo Ren to the breaking point, continuing the student-kills-the-master cycle. Summary: No Rey. Finn is training to be a Jedi. Kylo Ren takes the throne from Snoke.
This chapter is the only pre-TFA part of the story. Everything after that is in the AU as described.
A/N: Holy shit, I'm having so much fun with this. You all have no idea (but you will soon). Out here crafting whole-ass mythologies and cultures for this shit. Literally forgot to post this first chapter because I'm neck-deep in the next. Please, please, please do comment! I post for interactions with friends new and old. Otherwise I'd hoard all my embarrassing stories like the grouchy old dragon I really am.
1.
He needed to maul something.
His lightsaber practically vibrated on his belt, answering the pull of itching hands as Kylo Ren stormed into the planet-side depot. Civilians scattered from their orderly lines in front of the First Order’s regional bureaucratic office, startled like so many kaadus. The system had so little to offer, the Order couldn’t even justify a separate complex for the port authority and notary.
A shabby little base on a barren little world. If he could, he’d sink his saber to the planet’s core and kill it all in one, fell stroke.
What a waste of his time.
The rebel insurgent had nothing. They hunted him to the edge of the First Order’s territory only to discover a dead end whose handful of contacts met the heat of Kylo’s blade long ago. They’d missed something. He’d missed something. Instead of fresh leads into the Resistance’s plans, he would leave empty handed. This detour took weeks, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that their enemies were planning something. But in the end, the only thing the dead Rodian had been good at was hiding. Any trooper could’ve shot the scum and been done with it. No need for the Knights of Ren.
He looked like a fool.
Rage tipped over the edge of reason, flooding logic, and plans, and anything but the dark urge to destroy.
He marched through the door, well ahead of his knights. The stormtroopers were nearly as eager to avoid his wrath as the civilians, and he burst into an empty hall. The faintest conversation reached him, a hum of living Force further inside. He followed it. Down the hall. Around the corner. Gathering fuel to further spark his hate for this place and all the people in it as he approached.
A crisp, core world accent he had no doubt belonged to an officer carried farthest.
“I’m afraid it just won’t do. If you want clearance to leave for Gan Moradir, I’ll need those credits in my hand. Today.”
“You already have them.”
The second voice almost surprised Ren. He could barely feel the speaker’s signature, and he rested his hand on his saber, ready for a battle. No one unskilled in the Force could veil themselves like that.
From the sound of things, he had two valid targets to suffer for his humiliation. With new focus, he prepared to take the last corner, the heat in his blood ready to burn through the traitors and fools ahead.
Just out of sight, the officer tsked. “Not enough, I’m afraid.”
“Do you plan on demanding more every time we visit your system?”
“I could.”
“I’m afraid that will be very bad for trade.”
Ren saw the pair before they saw him. A First Order corporal with his hands clasped behind his back and a sneer on his face stood opposite a civilian girl, both oblivious to their approaching doom.
“Corporal.”
The man practically jumped out of his uniform, eyes bugging wide. The girl barely even flinched, following the officer’s panicked gaze with guarded curiosity. Ren would deal with her after he thinned the ranks. It was important to cut out rot before it spread, after all.
“Lord Ren!” The officer’s voice wavered, nearly breaking like a teenager’s as he took two steps away from the civilian and bowed to his superior. “My apologies. We’d heard your knights may be in the system, but we had no idea you’d actually –”
“What is the First Order’s standing on bribery?” He asked like he didn’t know simply so the criminal would recite his own conviction. Let him know how he’d failed. Let the fear string out his last moment.
The corporal’s mind couldn’t keep pace with his spiking adrenaline. He shifted, eyes darting for an escape, an excuse, as he tried to drag an explanation through his dry mouth.
“Well, I…”
Ren had no mercy. And no patience. His hand clenched over his blade’s hilt, and he imagined he could already feel the subtle vibration as it came to life to end another’s.
“Well?”
The corporal swallowed, and Ren watched the confidence roll away down the man’s throat.
“Soliciting or accepting bribes in any form, be it credits or goods, is a class three offense, sir.” He spoke clearly. Responding to a clear order with clear rules he would’ve learned by rote in training. He knew the consequences for disguising this theft behind the First Order’s banner, and now Ren would reveal a new part of the corporal. Blood. Bone. The messy things he wrapped out of sight beneath his skin.
Ren hummed. A mockery of consideration as he swayed nearer, forcing the smaller man to stare up at a painful angle. Decapitation was too neat for such a selfish little traitor. Maybe he’d sheer away half the man’s chest. Or leave him in a dozen pieces for his command to discover.
“I see.” He stalked forward another step, savoring the building dread like a cool wind beneath his mask. “And what is the punishment for class three offenses?”
The officer’s lingering hopes to put off his superior with a lie – Blame the girl, his mind screamed – finally crumbled. The dread Force-wielder had caught him. He knew enough to damn him. He’d been judged. He’d been sentenced. Only one step remained. Kylo Ren loomed, a Loth cat playing with vermin caught raiding the larder, and his uniform was an invitation to deal justice, not the shield the corporal once believed. He backpedaled, nearly foaming at the mouth as he spluttered a final plea for mercy.
“Lord Ren, please! I merely –!”
Red light and a crackling hum cut him off.
Ren speared the traitor through the belly, letting the fool totter backwards, wheezing for a breath that would never come. The corrupt officer groped over his exposed diaphragm as he tumbled to the floor, and his head met the polished floor with a crack as he continued pointlessly gasping.
It wouldn’t be a quick death.
Satisfied, Ren looked at the second actor in this little scene. She’d barely flinched when he struck down the corporal, but her attention remained fixed on the dying criminal. Ren waited for the inevitable wave of panic, ready to toy with a fresh target, but the life ending at her feet held her gaze. Something about her blunted his senses, and he struggled to pry into her mind beyond what she projected: caution and studied calm.
Maybe it was shock. Or maybe she needed reminding of her own mortality.
Ren cut off the corporal’s death rattle with a stroke of his saber, and as the head rolled across the hall, the girl finally looked up to meet his gaze. He glowered back through his visor, itching for her reaction.
She bowed. Maintaining the poise of a diplomat who hadn’t just witnessed a brutal execution, she dipped at the knees, dropping her eyes in polite deference before rising to meet him all over again. Still as a lake.
His lightsaber hissed, twisting in his grip. He pointed it under her chin, demanding she answer every question he hadn’t asked.
“You.” He didn’t bother with the show he’d put on for the corporal. Her careful placidity irritated him, and it felt like her very presence muted his senses when he hunted for her fear.
He looked again, noting the grey stone pendant and loops of beads she wore. A memory teased the edge of his lingering rage, dragging his focus away from his quest for bloodshed. He’d seen that material before. He recognized the numbing sensation in the Force from a failed project to build better restraints for Force sensitive prisoners. “What is that?”
Her fingers rose to the pendant, brushing over an unfamiliar pattern of engraved stars.
“It’s Selenubis, sir.” She paused, flicking her gaze over his mask like she might find a clue to his expression. When he didn’t answer, she pushed ahead. “A traditional protection charm from Lethe. If it’s offensive to the First Order I can come again with out it…?”
Behind his mask, he ground his teeth, clawing against the foggy wall so few of her thoughts penetrated. Selenubis proved useless to the First Order when it became clear the stone did as much to shield a prisoner from other Force users as it did to shackle the target.
She wanted to return without her shield? She wouldn’t leave with it. He’d hack it off her neck, and if he didn’t like what he found in her head, she wouldn’t leave with that, either.
His flickering saber reflected in her eyes as he angled it up, forcing her to expose her throat as red lightning reflected in bottomless reservoirs of control. He didn’t believe for a second she was ignorant of the power in her little trinkets and beads.
Just as he prepared to cleave through her jewelry – and likely leave a deep burn to remember him by – one of his knights burst into the hall.
“Commander. The Supreme Leader requests your presence. Immediately, sir.”
His foiled rage rebounded, arcing like a current through his bones and burning him with his own intent as he growled in frustration. The sound hissed through his modulator.
This would have to wait.
Deactivating his saber, he stepped back, pivoted on his heel, and marched back the way he came. He would have to relive his humiliation at his master’s feet, and there was no time to vent his frustrations.
He left no orders in his rush to answer his master’s summons. No one held the girl or even took special note of her name and business as he knelt before Snoke’s projected image, and by the time he returned to the hall, she was gone.
The documentation the dead corporal had been withholding, a pile on the floor by his headless corpse, had gone with her.
