adarkergray | Kenoma

Kenoma

Previously:
Escape From Starkiller Base
At the Monuments of Madness
A Living Weapon

To Jacob's surprise, they made it to Ahch-To's system without incident - but then, it was clear now that the Force was on their side. As per his calculations, they'd dropped out of hyperspace a few hundred thousand kilometers away, just beyond its outermost moon's orbit, and as they headed toward the planet at sublight speeds, he tried to ignore the way his protective instincts were going into overdrive.

However, the closer they got to the planet, the more he couldn't help being aware that everyone there, everyone they were going to see, was someone who'd hurt Kylo terribly, and Force, how could Jacob even begin to justify taking him down there? To put him in that level of danger, in the kind of condition he was in--

He made himself take a deep breath, though the fingers of his free hand were clamped tightly around the hilt of one of his lightsabers. The urge was incredibly strong to tell Kylo that he couldn't in good conscience do this, that there had to be another, better way to defeat Snoke, and they would find it - but, deep down, he knew that if there was, the Force would have shown it to Kylo instead. He had to have faith in his master, and in the Force.

Instead, right now, he had more sympathy than ever for why Snoke wanted to destroy the Force's will - not that he had any sympathy for Snoke himself. That thought was enough to settle his nerves slightly by reminding what they were here for, why it was important, why they could all work together just this once.

Snoke had to die. That was the one thing they all could agree on.

Finally, he calmed his mind enough to push his senses outward through the Force, to see whose presence he could detect. Even this close in, he still couldn't pick up Skywalker, but he could sort out Rey and General Organa from the background energy of the planet. He turned to Kylo. "...Your mom's still here. Do you want me to ask her to leave?"

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The long stretch of deep sleep proved how much their minds and bodies needed to recover from the battle. For Kylo, those twenty hours had their ebbs and flows, their dreams and their fits. But when Jacob stroked his cheek, he hardly moved. A soft groan escaped his lips, but nothing more.

He needed to rest.

More than that, he needed healing.

Rey must have known that. She may have even felt it through the Force. When Jacob approached the entrance to the temple, she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t outwardly angry either. She wanted to be angry, but her mind was like the sea - mostly calm, with sharp waves breaking against the edges from time to time.

“The Force feels... different... with Snoke gone.”

Rey let out a long sigh.

“It’s strange. I... I should hate him.” She tilted her head toward the direction Jacob came from. She was no longer speaking about Snoke, but about Kylo. “He’d kill his own family right now if he had the strength to do it. I can’t forgive that. I can’t allow that! But... the way he feels in the Force. It... it hurts... It feels like something is tearing him apart and eating him alive.”

Jacob sighed softly. There were any number of defenses or justifications he could make for his master, from the fact that Luke and Leia had given up any claim of familial bond between themselves and Kylo years ago, to the full depths of the reasons why Kylo would never be able to forgive Luke - who, quite frankly, probably knew he deserved whatever was coming to him.

Jacob also knew that none of those defenses or justifications would accomplish what he was after now. "He isn't going to have that chance, and not just because we don't have time for it before we leave here. After this, Kylo and I are out of the war between the New Republic and the First Order. We're going to have something a lot more important to occupy our time for a long while after this - the eldest of his children are only about six standard years old." He'd been approaching Rey as he spoke, and he sat down across from her now. "...And children that young shouldn't have to see their father in the kind of condition he's in now."

He didn't know what Snoke had done to those children already, or had forced them to do - but what Jacob did know was that he was their parent now, just as much as Kylo was, and he was going to protect them in any way he could from suffering any further trauma on top of it all. "Please, Rey. I can't heal him by myself."

The look on Jacob’s face all but echoed what the Force had been telling her. “He’s dying. Isn’t he...”

As much as she despised Kylo Ren for killing Han, for hurting her friends, for throwing away everything she always wanted... Rey couldn’t bear the burden of being the reason those children would grow up like she did - lost and alone. No one deserved that.

More than anything, Jacob hadn't wanted to admit to himself, just how bad it really was - but now that Rey had confronted him with it, he had no choice. "This is the worst he's been since I rescued him from the Finalizer. And, as enmeshed as he was with Snoke before... it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he's dying now. Or that he wouldn't survive long enough for medical treatment to help."

But Jacob wouldn't let that happen. No matter what it took, he wouldn't let it happen. "But together, we have what it takes to save him." He got to his feet, and extended his hand to Rey to help her up.

The Force certainly spoke the truth.

She wondered, briefly, if Leia had sensed it too. Or if Luke even could, having shut himself off from the Force yet again. But she was quickly brought back to the present when Jacob extended his hand.

“The technique we were practicing on the samples? It worked?”

Hesitantly, she reached out to take it.

For the first time in what felt like days, Jacob smiled, as he helped Rey to her feet. "It worked. On the ones where you used your own energy, the presence of the cancerous cells decreased by nearly 90%, and in the one where we executed the full technique, the cancer was no longer detectable. I'm hoping the result in vivo is going to be just as good."

As he led the way up to the ship, he realized that she was right: the Force really did feel different, now that Snoke was dead. And he could tell that the healing technique was going to be easier, this time.

A smile broke out over her face. The fact that it worked that well, especially on the first try, was almost impossible to believe. And yet, she knew Jacob was speaking the truth.

She just had to hold out hope that he was telling the truth about their plans and intentions. That they would, in fact, leave peacefully and never return.

Rey followed Jacob up the boarding ramp and through the corridors of his ship. Kylo was still out, but perhaps he felt them approaching. As they entered the room, he groaned in his sleep, jerking slightly and mumbling something incoherent.

Considering what he'd managed to accomplish in the cave, seeing him like this was difficult to bear. Painfully thin, physically weak, propped up on pillows and nourished by tubes, Rey had to cover her mouth just to stifle the gasp. Jacob was right - no child should be forced to see their parent in such a state.

Maybe, just maybe, she dared to let herself imagine, Kylo Ren had done his penance. Maybe. Maybe not.

She whispered softly so as not to wake him. "...How do you want to do this?"

Jacob reached out, gently, to speak into Kylo's mind. Master, Rey and I are going to heal you - it's going to be just us, this time. I don't think we'll need your help, but we do need you to not resist. Even though he still didn't awaken, Jacob knew that on some level, he'd absorb the message, and it should be enough to keep his combat instincts from kicking in when he did regain consciousness. The last thing any of them needed was him breaking their focus before the technique was complete.

He turned back to Rey. "We're going to do it the same way we did on the last of the samples. I'll draw in the energy we need, and then you harness it." The Force wound might complicate things, but they'd find a way to work around it.

Just as he had before, Jacob focused on the movements of the Force around him, and drew on them slowly, beginning to build a standing wave. At first, the process was painful, and the sinkhole of the Force wound made it difficult to make any real progress; at last, though, the pain finally began to fade, and the sharp draw of the Force wound began to fade and grow indistinct around the edges. "...Try it now. Just ease into it. Feel the warmth, and then find the pain and slowly wash it away. Let the Force heal itself."

Kylo's breath hitched. He groaned weakly. From a certain angle, it looked as though he nodded. But given that he was too exhausted still to willfully speak into his apprentice's mind, that might have been wishful thinking on Rey's part.

Rey nodded as she pulled up a stool. She sat down and closed her eyes, meditating on the Force.

It took a while for Jacob to begin channeling the energy, but eventually, she did feel the warmth. And when she reached out, stretching her hands over Kylo's body, she definitely felt the pain. The intensity didn't surprise her, rather the sheer scope of it. The samples could have come from anywhere - she felt a wrongness wherever his blood could travel. No, it was within the blood itself.

It took Rey just as much time to center herself properly. But soon, she was sending warmth over and through the wrongness. The Force wound was hungry at first, greedily devouring this new source of energy, but as Rey sunk deeper into her meditative trance, its hold lessened. It grew placid, almost dormant. Its rough edges started to recede. Mutated cells were unfolding. Tumor markers were shrinking. The void was filling itself in. Piece by piece. Cell by cell. The Force was indeed healing itself.

Kylo's eyes suddenly snapped open.

Almost unconsciously, Jacob laid his hand gently on Kylo's shoulder. Jacob radiated a sense of absolute calm as he manipulated the Force, helping it to bring itself into balance, and hopefully, that would be all the reassurance Kylo needed; however, no matter how completely the two of them trusted each other, the events of the past few days had put them into uncharted new territory. And though Jacob would always do anything he could for his master, he'd never stopped emphasizing the fact that Kylo was the only one who truly knew what was right for himself. The healing could only proceed further if Kylo accepted it, and he'd suffered enough intrusions on his autonomy in the past few days that it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

On the other hand, Kylo understood exactly why this was important - and as long as he was conscious enough for it all to click, then everything should be fine. In the meantime, Jacob simply continued to focus on the task at hand, and helped Rey to hold her focus on it as well.

If it weren’t for Jacob’s help, Rey would have lost her focus the moment she felt him stir beneath her hands. There was a fear behind Kylo’s eyes, and a sudden wave in the calm ocean that was the Force.

It took a moment for Kylo to regain his senses beyond that.

It happened inwardly first - the constant pain he’d come to accept, the inherent sense of wrongness that circulated through his blood and the weary exhaustion that had plagued him for so long was receding slowly, but steadily. Even the Force wound, the gaping hole in his soul, seemed to be closing. It was nothing short of miraculous.

Only then did he notice a hand gently resting on his shoulder. He looked up at Jacob. He felt his apprentice serving as a conduit for the Force, not so unlike what he himself had just done in the battle with Snoke. He felt the scavenger working with him in tandem - connected in a way that he couldn’t tell who, if anyone, was an extension of the other. He felt in awe of it for a moment.

And then he felt profoundly at peace.

This was balance. This was Force healing in its purest form.

He settled his body and his mind, and then consciously opened himself to it. Jacob would feel the shift and understand it, even if Rey didn’t.

Jacob smiled when he felt Kylo relax into the healing technique, the last little bit of resistance to it evaporating. Initially, Jacob hadn't been sure how far they'd be able to get in the healing, and was willing to take whatever he could get, but now, he knew this was truly going to work.

He wasn't sure how much longer the three of them were there before he felt the flow of energy finally beginning to taper off, then settle into a steady pattern as the healing was completed. Slowly, Jacob drew back from the connection, returning to himself, and he blinked for a moment as he reoriented himself within his own senses. Then, he extended them again, trying to get an initial sense of how well the healing had worked - and it was even better than he expected.

Not only did the cancer seem to be gone, but so did the lingering organ damage from the months of starvation aboard the Finalizer. Jacob would have to do a full work-up to confirm, of course - scans, bloodwork, and maybe one final biopsy if anything seemed amiss, but he doubted that would prove necessary - but as far as he could tell...

"I think... that was a resounding success." For the first time in what felt like weeks, Jacob actually laughed, and leaned down to pull Kylo into an embrace. "How are you feeling? Does everything seem right?"

It was an incredible feeling, easily dwarfing the pride and satisfaction of Snoke’s death. To the point that, when it was finished, his essence actually longed for more. It took him a moment to separate himself from the feeling and mentally probe his own body. When he finally did, he sat up with a gasp and quickly found himself being pulled into a hug.

Kylo stared at Jacob, then at Rey. His expression betrayed both shock and awe.

“I feel fine.” It was more than he could have hoped for, more than he ever thought possible. “I feel better than fine. Even... even the Force wound is gone! Closed. You did it...”

More accurately, the Force wound felt very much like a real wound. It had healed, but could still be torn open with too much pressure. Not that Kylo intended to try. Not unless it was absolutely necessary.

"We did it." Jacob reached out to take Rey's hand, and squeezed it gently. "Rey, I can't even begin to thank you enough for your help. This wouldn't have been possible without you." He paused for a moment. "...I don't suppose there's any way I could talk you into coming with us, is there? Like I said, we're out of the war now. And what we're doing next might well prove to be a lot more crucial to the fate of the galaxy."

Wars came and went, after all, and the galaxy always managed to rebuild itself afterward. The remnants of Snoke's plot could do considerably worse, longer-term damage, scarring not only worlds, but the life-Force of the galaxy itself. And, of even more immediate relevance, it was up to Jacob and Kylo to prevent their children from becoming the weapons of mass devastation Snoke had seen them as, and help them instead to become the people they had every right to be. In both aspects of the task ahead, Rey would only continue to be helpful.

Rey was both flattered and flustered by Jacob’s request.

The technique had been miraculously successful. Although it would still take the man time to regain the strength he’d lost, seeing color back in his cheeks and life back in his eyes spoke volumes. Snoke was dead, but his former apprentice was going to live.

Rey was satisfied with that.

She pulled her hand back as she reminded Jacob, “You claim you take no sides in this war, but you still align yourselves with the First Order. The terms of our temporary truce ended with Snoke’s death. Trust is earned, but it is also very easily broken.”

The incident in the cave proved to her that Kylo’s hatred toward his own family would never change. She healed him, but she would never truly forgive him. It was better for the Knights of Ren to go their way and for Rey to go her’s.

Jacob had figured he wouldn't succeed there, but it never hurt to try. "...All right. And I know you probably won't change your mind, but I'll give you a datacard with an encrypt you can use to reach us, just in case." Of course, he knew Rey was smart enough to realize that there were more potential uses for an open line of communication with the enemy than just that - and Jacob didn't actually care how she persuaded herself to take the datacard, as long as she did. "Come on, I'll walk you out."

He let go of Kylo at last, and grabbed his datapad off the nightstand to program the card as he led the way out. And this time, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to defend his master, because Rey had said it herself: there was no peace left to keep. "...I know it rubs you the wrong way, how Kylo is about his family. But you know what Luke did to him when he needed his family the most. And Leia hasn't always been the way she is now, either. Just because Kylo wasn't abandoned the way you were, that doesn't mean his mother had any interest in being a parent - she was already too busy being a politician. From the time he was very young, she expected him to just understand why his needs always came in second to those of the entire rest of the galaxy, as far as she was concerned. I can't imagine how it'd feel, having my mother basically tell me every day that I was the least important person to her - but I can definitely see the effects." As they arrived at the boarding ramp, he removed the datacard from the pad, and offered it to her. "I'm not saying you don't have a right to feel how you feel, either, or that you're obligated to judge the Skywalkers by their past. Just try to remember that there are two sides to this, and real life isn't like the holos. Sometimes, there are no clear-cut heroes and villains."

Rubbing the wrong way was an understatement, and Rey almost told Jacob as much. But she calmed her mind just enough to let her anger stay simmering under the surface. Jacob may have been a Knight of Ren, but he'd also been a respectful and truly qualified teacher. Rey decided to truly listen to what he had to say.

It did not, however, sway her decision.

"He made his choice on Starkiller Base, just like he made his choice in the cave. And now, I'm making mine." she stood her ground. "I came to this island desperate to find my place in all this. You may have helped me to find it, but you are not it. My place, at least for the time being, is here on this island, studying from the ancient texts and maybe... maybe bringing balance to an old Jedi master who lost it when his nephew mistook a moment of fear for a lifetime of hate."

She spat those words with more vitriol than they likely deserved, and Jacob could probably sense the twinge of guilt that followed them. Rey, although powerful, did not always shield her mind.

"I'm not coming with you. But if our paths cross again..." she sighed, willfully quieting her mind again. "I won't strike the first blow."

In the end, she did take the datacard, sliding it into a pouch on her belt, before turning around. She did not look back.

Jacob sighed softly. "When our paths cross again, hopefully there won't be a reason for anyone to strike the first blow. In the eyes of the Force, we're all on the same side - I can feel it." As she left, he called after her, "Take care of yourself, Rey. I'll miss you."

At last, he closed the boarding ramp, and turned his mind away from the regret at their parting. He had much more important things to occupy his thoughts now. He made his way up to the cockpit, and took the ship back out of the atmosphere and away from the planet before programming in the coordinates for the hyperspace jump; as the stars around the ship bled into starlines, he returned to the cabin and to Kylo's side.

"We both know the healing technique was successful, but I want to have the numbers to back it up." He helped Kylo out of the bunk, to take him to the medbay. "I'm going to run some scans and blood tests, and once those confirm everything is good, it'll just be a quick surgery to take the central line out." Then, finally, it'd be a little easier to put the worst of this behind them, and focus on the future - one that looked brighter and brighter, the more Jacob thought about it. Snoke was gone, and Kylo and Jacob were going to be parents.

Kylo felt the distance grow between the ship and the planet, as well as between his family and himself. Rey stayed behind, and the ancient tomes - the very knowledge that healed him - stayed there with her. He felt his anger rise at the thought of his uncle still being alive, justified in what little he thought he did and what he might do with these new teachings. But the Force wound was silent, taking in nothing at all.

It was a strange, disconnected feeling.

Kylo nodded when Jacob approached. He moved slowly, still awestruck at how the constant aches and pains were all but gone. What remained, he assumed, was phantom pain, only there because he was expecting it to still be there. That, in and of itself, was surreal.

“Of course.” It would take time to regain his stamina, but the act of walking was no longer a chore. He situated himself so that Jacob could run the necessary tests. He ran his hand over the port. “I’m looking forward to that. How soon before we intercept? I want to be there when we do.”

Not unconscious. Not still sedated. He wanted to face Hux head on, just in case he had even the slightest desire to utilize any of the methods that Snoke did.

"Twelve and a half hours, give or take. And while sedation is usually recommended for removing a central line, it's not strictly necessary. I can do it under local anesthetic." If it had been anyone other than Kylo, he wouldn't have offered to do it without sedation, but this was the same man who'd refused even local anesthetic while Jacob performed abdominal surgery on him - Force, had it only been a year ago? For a fast and simple procedure like this, local anesthetic and a meditative trance would be enough, unless Kylo actually did want Jacob to put him all the way out. "...Believe me, I'm looking forward to getting that thing out of you, too."

Besides, he needed Kylo there with him when they arrived at the Supremacy. If the information he'd gotten out of Hux was anything close to accurate, they'd be walking into a hive of twitchy, paranoid crewers and Stormtroopers, and the situation could turn ugly if it wasn't adequately managed. Unlike Kylo, he didn't suspect that Hux might deliberately try to move against them; Jacob figured he'd done a good enough job of putting the fear into him to prevent that. However, he might no longer have control of the situation aboard the ship. And, if certain measures needed to be taken, Jacob also figured that Kylo had more knowledge than anyone left alive of the backdoors that Snoke had built into his soldiers' mental conditioning, so he could forcibly prevent them from ever being able to turn on him - backdoors that Kylo and Jacob might need to use in a worst-case scenario.

There had been so much that Kylo had needed to sacrifice in such a short time. He felt an almost-overwhelming sense of relief upon hearing his apprentice's response. To remain connected to the Force, to feel the pain and let it strengthen him, to endure... Yes, that was as it should be.

"Thank you."

Whatever happened, he knew he would need that enhanced connection the moment they stepped aboard the Supremacy.

"I want enough time to recover physically, while still being able to take advantage of the meditative trance. Time your procedure accordingly." he instructed. Were it not for that, 'as soon as possible' would have sufficed.

"Take some time to meditate as well. Reach out to them. Touch their minds, gently of course. Soothe them if you can. Let them know we're coming." he added. "If the Force wound remains closed, my energy may feel different to them from anything they've sensed about me so far. Yours may be more familiar. And less frightening."

"The blood tests will take another two hours to finish running, and we can do the procedure at any point after that." Assuming the results were what he was expecting, anyway - the scans didn't indicate any reason why they shouldn't be. "In the meantime, I do want to get some food into both of us, at the very least. I can go over your scans with you as well, if you'd like, but the most current ones look basically normal." There was some loss of bone density consistent with the ordeal Kylo had suffered, but no continuing signs of hypermetabolic activity. "...After that, I'll reach out to them."

For now, the most important thing was to make sure that he at least did what was necessary to make sure he and Kylo were taken care of. Otherwise, it'd be too easy to skip or put off things he shouldn't - and that was a habit he couldn't afford to get into, when soon, they'd be responsible for a lot more than just their own lives. Jacob couldn't remember the last time he'd been as excited over something as he was the fact that they were on their way to pick up their children, but he also knew that this would change their lives in ways he couldn't even begin to imagine yet, and the only way they'd be able to keep it all together was to maintain focus on what their priorities had to be from a practical standpoint.

Kylo nodded, and started walking to the galley. Food sounded good. Normal sounded even better.

"And now that Snoke is dead," he had to pause, as it felt so surreal to actually say that out loud, "there is no longer the danger of my mind being a conduit. I would like to better understand the technique you used to heal me, as well as anything else you may have found and were forced to keep secret."

Aside from wiping out the malignancies, it had also done the near-impossible task of closing the Force wound. It wasn't a permanent fix, as Kylo could feel it laying dormant within him. With enough energy and the right circumstances, he could tear the wound right open and reap both the curse and the rewards. Knowing a technique to close it again was certainly in his best interests - especially if it avoided going anywhere close to his family... or scavengers that chose to practically adopt themselves into it.

((Sorry for the delay. x_x I think it is debatable whether I'm really in good enough health to be back at work rn.))

Now that Snoke is dead. At those words, Jacob couldn't help smiling. Now that Snoke was dead, they finally had a chance to make a clean break with the pain of the past, and to start building a future that truly belonged to them. "Of course. I just wish I had managed to hold onto even one of those ancient Jedi texts, instead of letting Rey take them all back - there were some techniques I would've loved to study more, but I barely got the chance to do more than skim them. The only two have a good enough handle on to teach you right now are Force healing, and the ysalamir technique. That's the one I was using in short bursts to disrupt Snoke's connection with the Force, and it's relatively quick and simple to pick up."

Once he'd put their food on to cook - and set a timer, just in case - he opened his mind fully to Kylo, showing him how the technique worked, how it felt. Creating a Force-neutral bubble was an almost counterintuitive kind of skill, but he had every confidence that his master would pick it up just as quickly as he did everything else. When he thought Kylo had a good enough feel for it, he used the Force to levitate one of their spoons off the table. "Now try to disrupt my hold on it to knock it out of the air."

Kylo opened his mind, and Jacob's presence filled it.

At first, it felt as though Jacob was actually negating the Force, but that was impossible, as the Force still flowed between all things. Then, he felt the bubble itself, the outline of a warped barrier where everything was neutral inside.

It took Kylo a few attempts to visualize the technique, but once he could, the borders of the bubble weren't any more difficult than manipulating a solid object. And that was how he achieved that Force neutral bubble - not by creating it, but by physically moving the Force itself away from a point.

The spoon fell when Kylo formed the bubble completely around Jacob. He released it, and they practiced the technique a few more times. Kylo determined that he could also make the spoon fall by completely enveloping the spoon itself. (While it was not the best use of the technique in a combat situation, it might be useful if an aggressor was out of reach, among other things.)

"I see how Snoke was not prepared for this." he nodded. "I'll do it again. Against you. Show me how it feels when you resist."

If these techniques were in the ancient texts, which were in the presence of his enemies, they could be used against him. He needed to learn to defend himself from a Force neutral bubble as much as he needed to learn how to create and manipulate one.

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Kenoma

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