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bonemarroww · 5 years

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Kylo Ren x OFC

Summary: "They must have thought him mad. He himself wasn’t sure how sane he was; how much of what he had seen back on Lambda was real and how much of it was a nightmare. One thing he was sure of, however, was that he had been the only one alive in the end."

A/N: I have just recently finished playing SOMA and I’m still incredibly amazed by its philosophy and story, which is why I decided to indulge myself in some pre-game SOMA!AU.

AU context: SOMA is a 2015 horror game, set in 2104, in which the Earth was devastated by the impact of a comet, wiping out the surface and all of humanity. The only survivors are scientists working in undersea space research facilities named Pathos-II (which is divided in several research centers: Lambda, Theta...). These facilities rely on an independent AI called WAU, which uses a black fluid called 'structure gel' to control machines.

Word Count: ~10.000

“There is an incredible amount of minerals and petroleum in your blood… I have trouble even discerning your blood type.” Dr Amrita Maraj noted as her medical robot analyzed the sample of his blood. “Have you been… consuming structure gel?”

The man on the examination table diverted his eyes when confronted with the disapproving stare of the medic. The syringe containing his blood was carefully put in a box, but not quickly enough so Kylo couldn’t see the black tint it had taken. Black like structure gel; of course she would have guessed.

His lack of answer didn’t seem to bother her, as she went on examining his body and noting the few scratches and wounds he had acquired in the pas few days; nothing drastically serious, though he would probably have to wear a splint for his sprained wrist. The few questions she asked were met with silence, as though the man had lost his ability to speak on top of losing his entire crew.

As soon as he had arrived on Theta, he had been brought to the medical bay to be examined. After the hell that had happened on Lambda –though they knew very little of it yet–, Theta’s Security Operative had been fretting over his arrival, making sure he wouldn’t pose any form of threat. In a way, Kylo understood them; he had seen his face on a mirror in the escape shuttle. His skin was way too pale to be healthy, though dark rings circled his eyes; and his diving suit –as well as his skin, though he did not know to what extent at the time– was covered in structure gel. They must have thought him mad. He himself wasn’t sure how sane he was; how much of what he had seen back on Lambda was real and how much of it was a nightmare. One thing he was sure of, however, was that he had been the only one alive in the end. What a reassurance. Kylo wasn’t even certain he had actually made it to Theta, though he increasingly doubted the possibility of him imagining all of this.

The presence of the pretty medic who had taken care of him back on Omicron seven years prior was a bit disturbing, but for all he knew, she could have been sent here in the past few years for whatever reason. If anything, her presence was reassuring in a way.

“I’m afraid we will have to put you in quarantine. We don’t have any data about structure gel consumption. I mean, not beyond a few sips. And seeing the quantity of it in your organism, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had injected some in your own bloodstream as well.”

A muttered curse passed her lips, as she printed a copy of the collected data to be added to his files. Somehow, her pursed lips and the wary look she sent him made him anxious. It wasn’t his fault. She shouldn’t be looking at him this way. He couldn’t let her think he did it on purpose.

However, his lips felt heavy and so did his tongue, and when he tried to tell her, nothing but a ragged breath came out of his mouth. He felt weak and he felt dirty. The dried liquid on his skin was starting to itch, and his throat was burning. If only he could drink a bit of water…

“That is all the tests I can do right now and with the equipment at hand, but we’ll need to run a few scans of you later. I’ll call Strohmeier to lead you to the quarantine cell. He will… ask you a few questions about Lambda, I guess, so be prepared.”

The wounded man nodded, and weakly put back on the dirty sweater he had been wearing under the diving suit. Surely they would provide him with more decent clothing in the days to come, if only for sanitary issues. For now, this would have to do. Kylo wished he could apologize for the obvious distress his very presence brought to the medic. She was biting her lips almost to the point of drawing blood, eyeing him every few seconds as if he was about to jump at her. Like she hadn’t spent the last half hour making him turn around and undress, touching his limbs as if they were her own. Kylo wasn’t mad at her for the distrust she showed. It was only common sense.

The security operative from before arrived shortly, and exchanged a few brief words with the medic all the while surveying him. Strohmeier was a middle-aged man with a perpetual frown on his face. Kylo had heard about him on Lambda, from his friend Phasma, a young blonde dispatcher who had been transferred from Theta the year before. He was the kind of man to always worry about anything that might bring any kind of danger to the crew. Of course he would be approving the quarantine procedure.

“Dr. Ren, if you could follow me, I have a few questions for you.”

As he was about to get up and follow the man, his eyes still somewhat trailing on the doctor, he caught an uncertain look in her eyes.

“John, could we perhaps let the questions wait the time of a shower? I’m sure Dr. Ren will be incredibly more at ease with fresh clothes.” She intervened, with a tentative smile at Kylo.

Strohmeier sent her a disapproving look, but didn’t seem to object. The patient hoped his eyes expressed how grateful he was for her suggestion, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she put her hand on his shoulder, and whispered –in a voice that was too nervous to be really reassuring, but he could pretend– that they were going to the quarantine quarters, and that there he would have some time to rest before any questions would be asked. To this, he nodded. Even when obviously scared, her voice was gentle. He would follow her.

The quarantine quarters didn’t quite look like the prison he had had in mind. In fact, it looked exactly like his own room in Lambda, except from the door leading to a private bathroom, and the fact that the opening and closing of the main door was not under his control. He could get used to it.

“I’ll be on my way.” The medic got up after Kylo emerged from the bathroom.

The clothes he had gathered before going to the shower were a bit too small and impersonal, but being clean and safe was an incredible feeling. By now, the man didn’t really care anymore if this was true or if it was a hallucination –as long as it wouldn’t stop. There was nothing like feeling alive again this way.

However, the presence of the scornful Strohmeier was unnerving him. He didn’t want to let her go; she was the gentle one, she would keep him safe.

“Please stay.” He croaked, his throat hurting a bit after not having talked for what felt like a very, very long day.

She exchanged a surprised and admittedly wary look with the security operative, but eventually sat back on the chair she had pulled while he was away. Kylo himself took a seat on what would be his bed for the next forty days.

After a minute of awkward silence, the older man talked.

“We need to know everything that has happened on Lambda these past few days.”

Lambda, of course. So much had transpired there, Kylo hardly knew where to begin. Yet, somehow, deep down, he could guess when it had started.

“I started working on Lambda in 2099, under the supervision of Chief Factor Snoke. Everything was going right until the comet wiped out the surface of Earth. I don’t know how or why, but the WAU… changed.”

From the corner of his eye, he could see the medic –Dr Maraj, she had called herself– nodding as if to herself. The WAU was functioning all over Pathos-II, so surely the other bases such as Theta had felt the difference too.

“The structure gel started expanding like crazy all around the base. There were leaks everywhere, and structure gel scabs on the walls. More and more rooms in the lower levels were becoming plain unhealthy to frequent. It’s around this time we found Chief Snoke’s mockingbird.”

The Lambda transfer almost smirked at the memory. It had been engineer Armitage Hux who had found it while checking the lower docks for any operational helper droid. He had then come to look for Kylo, looking like he had seen a ghost, to ask him to guard the machine while he went to fetch Snoke.

“A mockingbird?” repeated Strohmeier.

As Kylo was about to explain, Dr Maraj beat him to it.

“A machine modified by the WAU, in which it has implanted a brain scan of someone. The droid is convinced to be human, like, the original person from whom the scan was taken. Remember the whole Adam Golaski thing a few months ago?”

Strohmeier nodded and beckoned Kylo to continue.

“Well, Chief Snoke was pretty disturbed. We neutralized the droid, but Snoke wasn’t the same after. He’s always been taciturn, but after that it became worse. I think this is when he started ingesting structure gel, and severed all communication to other sites. We didn’t see him for a few weeks, and when he reappeared, he was half mad.”

Recalling it was enough for adrenaline to shoot through his blackened veins. At the sight of his growing anxiety, the medic stood up and knelt beside Kylo. She took his hand and talked to him lowly, telling him it was over and that he was safe.

“He insisted we ate structure gel and disabled our shuttle system and zeppelin, so we couldn’t get out.” The younger man went on. “At first, we refused, but when he threatened to kill one of our colleagues, we did as he asked. For a few weeks, everything almost went back to normal, though Snoke was changing. His cells were mutating. Then, people started disappearing. We would find them days later, either dead or connected to the WAU, some starting to change, missing limbs and having them replaced with machine parts.”

At this point, Dr Maraj had covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes closed. She had paled drastically since he had started telling the events. Kylo understood. He too had reacted in a similar manner when he had seen Snoke for the first time in weeks, following the mockingbird event. His distorted face, the bulbous growths on his skin –it had been too much for him at the time. Now, it seemed like he could see anything without so much as blinking.

“Dispatcher Phasma, engineer Hux and I managed to unlock the escape shuttle, and were trying to gather the survivors when everything really went to hell. Snoke was trying to get us, and Hux was starting to go mad himself. He locked himself in the control room with Snoke to try and trap him. He was afraid of going crazy and hurting us. When we saw him again, he was like a walking corpse.”

Kylo had never even liked the man, but seeing him like this, his eyes black, gel dripping from his mouth as he walked mindlessly through the halls, was another thing entirely. Maybe he could have saved him. If only they had gone away instead of trying to find more of the crew. They would have had a chance.

“I was knocked out at some point. When I woke up, I was covered in structure gel, and some had been injected in my bloodstream, but I was alive. I didn’t know if the others had managed to escape with the shuttle, so I headed there. I found Phasma’s corpse in the station, but the shuttle was still intact. This is how I got here.”

“Hello, Dr Ren. How are you feeling today?��

The gentle voice of Dr Maraj shook Kylo from his thoughts. Just like usual, at 12 o’clock sharp, the medic would come to bring him food and check on him. It had been ten days since his rather catastrophic arrival at Theta. Everyday, the only presence he would exchange a few words with was the young woman. She had deemed his situation non contagious, and so his isolation had for only purpose to study the evolution of the structure gel within him.

After a few days, black scabs had started to appear on his skin in various places, and so Dr Maraj had concluded they had to attempt something to cure him, or else it would only get worse. Therefore, they had started pumping large samples of his soiled blood to be replace with sane one. To say Kylo would be fine was certainly an overstatement, but he did feel a bit better already. Healthy food and healthy blood was helping substantially to his physical therapy.

His mind, though, was another thing entirely. The isolation he was subjected to was already starting to take a toll on him. Every waking minute was either spent trying not to fall asleep, his unconscious mind being filled by nightmares, or waiting for someone to come in. The crew had left books and a few games in the room, but no books or games could compensate the absence of another living person next to him. If he were to be honest with himself, Kylo was a bit worried about losing his mind in the silence and emptiness of the quarantine quarters.

This is how his tentative friendship with Dr Amrita Maraj began.

“I’m quite fine, though I’d rather you stopped calling me Dr, doctor.”

The woman shrugged with a small smile and sat on the chair near his bed. Despite her initial nervousness around him, she came to install some proximity between them, always making sure to be close enough so that she could grab his hand or touch his cheek. Kylo would have never described himself as a person who enjoyed this kind of intimacy before, but now that he was alone and on the verge of insanity, he would give anything and everything so that she could stay a bit longer, let her hands run through his hair, or stroke his shoulder.

She was gentle, and she was alive; two rare things on this Earth these days.

“You’re right.” She chuckled. “We’re all doctors of some sort here anyway.”

As Kylo accepted the tray of food she placed on his knees and started eating, he watched her. Kylo Ren was a man of a few words. Most of the times, when they sat together, it would be her who did the talking –not that he had a lot of things to tell anyway. He was never one to have many friends, even back on Omicron when he had started his job, or even further back, on the surface. After years working in the Pathos-II complex, rarely seeing the light of the day with his own eyes, he could barely recall what the surface looked like. What it was like to walk in the street and to bump into someone; what it was like to drive a car with the window opened and to feel the wind.

Amrita had been on a holiday at the surface, just a few weeks before the Impact, a few months earlier this year. She had told him about it on a few occasions, as she was keeping him company. She had shown him pictures of her family, talking about them present tense; looking like she hadn’t fully registered that they were gone. Pathos-II was such a secluded place from the rest of the world, that having news from family and friends on the surface was very rare. Despite the Impact Event wiping out the entire surface, many struggled to accept the fact that their loved ones had disappeared and were not coming back.

It was not a problem Kylo had to face day to day; his father having been very much absent when he was a kid, and his mother working as Chief Factor at Omicron.

Talking about his mother, he did not doubt one second that she would come to Theta at some point to check on him, when the information of Lambda’s demise will have reached their communication center.

Shaking the thought from his head, Kylo focused on the woman he was already starting to call his friend; in some quiet place at the back of his mind. She looked a bit tired, and though she was as agreeable a company as ever, something seemed to be off with her.

“Are you alright, Amrita?” he asked in a low voice, his dark eyes looking straight at hers.

There was this distress in her eyes again; the same kind he had observed when he had first come in her labs for examination. Kylo sincerely hoped it had nothing to do with him, he wouldn’t have his only friend afraid of him in any way.

Her ‘deer caught in headlights’ expression soon gave way to sadness and resignation, and she sighed deeply before answering.

“A colleague of mine committed suicide yesterday.”

The news hit Kylo like a punch in the guts. A small, paranoid part of him immediately felt guilty. It must have been him. It had to be him. He had brought the madness all the way from Lambda; it was his fault. He should have died there, breaking shuttles and slashing diving suits to make sure no one would ever get out there. It was what you did to the sick ones; isolate them not to contaminate the others.

Just like they were trying to do with him.

“Why- why would they do that?” he asked, a lump in his throat.

At this moment, Amrita’s eyes lightened, as if frightened, and caught his face in her hands. Though she looked about to cry, there was a form of determination in her eyes, as well as a gentleness the quarantined man could hardly comprehend.

“Kylo, it has nothing to do with you or Lambda!” she assured him. “I promise.”

The man still lowered his gaze, but didn’t try to convince her otherwise. Seeing him being so unconvinced by her promise, the medic brought her hands back to her knees. For a few moments, none of them talked, until Kylo felt the gnawing urge to know more. To be told it wasn’t in any way a consequence of his coming to Theta.

“Why?” he repeated.

His friend took a deep breath before getting into an explanation. When she talked, her hands moved, tracing patterns in the air, dancing one with the other, as if trying to mime.

“Ever since the Impact Event, Dr Chun started working on a project named ARK. It basically consists in scanning our brains to get a copy of our mind into one big artificial world she has created. When we will all be on board the ARK, she will launch it into space with the Omega Space Gun at Phi. Alimented by the solar panels, it could last for thousands of years.” Amrita softly explained. “Eternity among the stars.”

Kylo scoffed at the idea. It was ridiculous. Sending data into space wasn’t going to save what was left of humanity. It wasn’t even like it could improve their lives or anything. Making people believe they were real, living into a virtual paradise –this was what the WAU had done to the poor souls at Lambda, who would live their last moments connected to the AI via structure gel, thinking they were back home on the surface.

“Sarang used to think there is a… continuity of our soul from our living life to the ARK. According to him, if we die during the scan, or shortly after, our conscience directly flies to the ARK, and lets the real us live within it… But if we don’t, if we still live after the scan, we will never know nothing but the hell that is our lives down here, all the while our copy is having a good time in the virtual world Dr Chun created.”

He could see the brilliance in her eyes; the sort of awe she felt regarding the project, all the while crying the loss of her friend. He shook his head. She was either incredibly naïve or not so bright after all.

“This is bullshit.”

He pretended not to see the offended look in her eyes, or the way she slightly stepped back when she saw his eyes darken with anger. How could she not understand?

“This is an utopia, not a solution. Scanning our brains is not going to save us from down here. We will keep on living in this shithole and we will die when the WAU will have found a way to spread its madness everywhere!”

His strong words made Amrita flinch and lower her gaze. After a few moments, the silence became unbearable between the two of them, and so the man apologized for raising his voice. Still, she wouldn’t look at him in the eyes, and a terrible feeling of having disappointed her flowed through him. Eventually, she shrugged.

“Have it your way. I think it’s rather poetic. The last remains of mankind forever roaming in space… But you don’t have to get scanned, it’s up to you if you want to be a part of it or not. As for me, I think if there is at least a small part of yourself you can allow to be happy, then… why not?”

Images flooded his mind; images of his colleagues’ bodies, connected to the WAU, barely breathing as they mumbled in their dreams, filled with artificial happiness. He couldn’t let her become this. It was like taking a dream and sucking all meaning out of it.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to do it.” He half commanded, half pleaded.

At this, Amrita frowned, and crossed her arms. Kylo knew she would be cross with him if he kept on with this tone, but he couldn’t help himself. He had just found some form of normalcy again, and the thought of losing it once more because of some doctor’s pet project was unbearable.

“Kylo, if this is your way of comforting me, it isn’t working. Whether I’m thinking on getting on the ARK or not is none of your business.”

Sighing, she got up and turned her back on him.

“I’ll come back in a few hours to check on your scabs.”

A few weeks of blood purges and disinfecting his wounds did wonders to Kylo’s health. Even though he would always suffer a kind of trauma related to the structure gel and his paranoia regarding the WAU, he did feel incredibly better physically. The scabs had long since fallen off and the new skin underneath was colored in a flushed, perfectly healthy pink.

For the first time since his arrival at Theta, Kylo was feeling like he might get away with what his body had endured and start over, in a new base. Theta was the main quarters of Pathos-II, one of the biggest facilities and undoubtedly the most looked after. The WAU would undoubtedly strike there one day, but it seemed unlikely to be anytime soon, considering the place seemed clean of any structure gel leaks.

By mutual agreement, Kylo and Amrita had chosen to avoid talking about their differences of opinion considering the ARK, instead conversing about lighter subjects such as their field of work or their memories from the surface. They had discovered a mutual taste for science fiction, as ironic as it was considering their current situation. Old movies from the XXth century –though they were still fond of them– had gotten it completely wrong; but who would have known the future of technology and humanity wouldn’t be among the stars but underneath the oceans?

“I miss the stars very much.” Amrita said once, as she was tracing light patterns on the skin of his back as she examined him. “I saw them for the first time when I went on a trip to Europe in 2090. Where I used to live, a century of heavy industrialization had stolen the stars from the sky. We could only see the smog. When I saw them for the first time, it appeared to me that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

She had played with a strand of his hair that was hiding one of his scars, and it had felt like the most domestic scene he had ever experienced.

“It feels good to think that, even if the surface has been wiped out, the stars are still there, even though we can’t see them.” She had added, putting the strand of hair in place before telling him he could put his white quarantine shirt back on.

Kylo had never given much thought to the stars. Ha had grown up playing video games about space, liked Star Wars, and had done a project about planet colonization when he was in 10th grade, but like any child who had grown up with visible stars above his head, he had taken them from granted. When he had been out of boarding school, he had joined his mother by taking a job at Pathos-II, but had never really thought back to what he was losing on the surface –until he actually lost it.

“There is an observatory at Phi.” Kylo had answered while getting dressed.

This had brought a smile to her lips, and her eyes had been dreamy, if only for a second.

“I know. Catherine –Dr Chun– will go there to launch the ARK with the space gun. Maybe I could accompany her when the time comes, if only to take a look at the stars.”

The man had hummed in response.

Sometimes, when you live trapped at the bottom of the sea, at the end of your world, with limited food, limited space and limited hopes, you just have to learn to dream.

As the day of his release was approaching, an uncharacteristic good mood –tinted with impatience, naturally– was taking Kylo. It was the 5th of August, and in less than a week, he would be free to roam the station, maybe even rehabilitated to some task to occupy his mind, and he would finally see other living people than Amrita Maraj. Not that he had ever been the social type, or that his medic friend was getting tiresome; but hours of being alone, in the white room, had worn both his patience and his sanity, making him feel like the proverbial caged lion.

Of course, he wasn’t naïve enough to think he would get all of his responsibilities back; first, because Theta, no doubt, already had a chief engineer, and second because he knew people like Strohmeier would make sure everyone knew he couldn’t be trusted. Could he be trusted? Kylo would tend to think himself reliable; he did feel rather good about getting back to work, if only to get some normalcy back; but maybe it was just a subjective impression, like those mockingbirds believing they were actual humans.

“And this is how I almost –but fortunately didn’t– blow up Omicron.” He finished telling the story of his first big mistake on duty.

To his delight, Amrita laughed, the sound echoing slightly in the almost empty room.

“I can remember!” she chuckled. “I was asked to prepare a bed in the infirmary, I wasn’t sure if it were for a potential accident or for you after your mother found out what you had done.”

It was the man’s turn to smile and shake his head, knowing full well what his mother was capable of. Working under her supervision had been a way for him to reconnect with her after his childhood of not seeing her so often, and he was glad he had done so, but accepting the promotion to Lambda had definitely been the occasion to move on from being ‘chief Organa’s son’.

His friend’s smile took a more nostalgic tone.

“Your name was still Ben Solo at the time.” She noted quietly.

This ended their moment, as Kylo hung his head low and breathed. He knew this was going to come at some point. She had known him as Ben, after all. It must have come as a surprise to her when she had seen him being brought to her under the name of Dr Kylo Ren; that is, if she had recalled his face from before. He had let his hair grow, and gotten rid of this awful braid that was so fashionable for young men in the late 2090’s.

Eventually, we he felt the courage to, he raised his head again.

“Yeah, I… I legally changed my name at some point at Lambda. Chief Snoke was the first to suggest it when I told him about how much I hated wearing my father’s name. I thought about just, you know, taking my mother’s, but I figured it would be bothersome to have two ‘Dr Organa’s at Pathos-II.”

To his relief, Amrita nodded and smiled, taking his hand and squeezing it slightly, as if saying she would drop the subject if he were uncomfortable with it.

“Why Kylo Ren then?”

Her curiosity held some excitement in a way, like a child, and this is how Kylo found himself remembering the story of how he chose his name.

“Well, it there was all this enthusiasm about the ‘new year, new century’ thing, with old classics of futurist science fiction being back in cinemas, so I thought Kylo was pretty cool as a new name. As for Ren… At the time, I was a big fan of this old band from the 60’s, that was called…”

The medic snapped her fingers and her smiled widened.

“The Knights of Ren!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I literally grew up with them!”

Her excitement was contagious, bringing a smile on Kylo’s lips. Of course she would have known them. They shared the same kind of tastes in music and movies –well, except for her bloody incomprehensible love for XXth century Russian rock. No one is perfect. Though he was sure if he asked her, she could find a way to persuade him that it wasn’t so different from whatever band he liked. She had this talent for far-fetched thinking, which he could only acknowledge with reverence.

As he was about to answer, an Asian woman in a white blouse barged in, looking completely distressed.

“Amrita, it is horrible! It’s Finley, he… he killed himself after the scan. Strohmeier’s angry. He wants me to stop the scans.”

The medic shot up, standing to go and hold her colleague’s hand, to try and calm her. For his part, Kylo felt his blood run cold through his veins. It was the third suicide in a month. Sarang’s theory of the ‘continuity’ was starting to turn into an ugly mess. If nothing was done to appease the crew, there would be more deaths, he was certain of it. After running from Lambda, Kylo had really thought he could distance himself from the madness of their lives; but the people at Theta weren’t so different. Having been isolated for so long had made him somehow idealize their state of mind, thinking everything could –and hopefully would– be fine; but they were cut from the same cloth, still as incapable of coping with the idea of being trapped underneath the seas. Of course there would be depression.

“God, Catherine, it is terrible indeed. Maybe you could put the project on hold, just the time to reassure everyone…”

And with such a false hope as the ARK project; it was only natural for simple-minded, depressed crewmates to give up on their lives for the virtual utopia they put so much faith in.

“But I’m so close! It’s not my fault people keep killing themselves…”

This would need to stop, before all of them went insane.

To Kylo’s great relief, news of his detention in quarantine –and, by extension, of the events on Lambda– did not reach his mother until he was freed from the quarantine quarters. Having her visit him there would have been awfully too close to the one time she had had to go and get him from the sobering cell of the police station near his boarding school, when he was a teen. To say she had been pissed at having to spend hours of her –very rare– vacation time looking for her delinquent of a son was an understatement. It had also triggered an enormous argument between his parents over face-time, which his father had –quite unsurprisingly– fled by turning off his phone.

It was around this time he had decided to commit more to his studies. The burning knowledge of having disappointed his mother had been an incredible weight on his shoulders. He didn’t want to end up like his father. He was worth better than this alcoholic of a car-racing loser.

The fact remains that welcoming his mother in proper clothes and without scabs all over his skin was rather pleasant. Though he wasn’t so close to her, the fact of not thinking he would live on to see her one more time had shaken him to the bone, when he had been crawling in structure gel to try and escape what was left of Lambda. He had welcomed her at the entrance of Theta, and even though she had been soaked, still in her diving suit since she had walked from the shuttle station, Kylo had welcomed her embrace with the same eagerness she had for hugging him. Only when her arms had been surrounding him, he had realized he was shaking; and that a few stray tears were coating his cheeks.

For the first time, he realized what he had almost lost. If he had not woken up from the blow that had him lose consciousness; he if had been too caught up in the artificial happy life the WAU had tried to lure his mind with; if he had been at the shuttle station at the same time as Phasma and they had both been attacked; if Snoke had turned him on his side like he had done with Hux…

Kylo wouldn’t have been here, embracing his mother, as she whispered in his ear how happy she was that he had made it.

Behind him, he could feel Amrita smile tenderly. She had insisted on accompanying him to the gate. Even though his quarantine time was over, Strohmeier had insisted on the medic keeping an eye on him. She didn’t mind, and neither did he; they spent time in her office in the labs, or out in the see-through observation corridor, where they could observe the various fish and occasional whale swim by. It was relaxing; staying quite close, but having the world widen from the small room he had been confined in for so long.

“Is she the one I should thank for saving my son’s life?” Dr Leia Organa inquired, looking past her son’s shoulder and noticing the white-clad medic.

As he let go of her, Kylo felt a surge of awkwardness creeping up his neck, at the idea of his mother and his friend meeting on such terms. Of course they knew each other –Amrita had spent three years in Omicron under Dr Organa’s direction; she just hadn’t met her as her friend’s mother yet.

“I think your son managed to save his life on his own, Dr, but I accept the thanks nonetheless.” She playfully answered. “He’s been very brave.” She added, this time looking straight into Kylo’s eyes.

This brought a smile to the older woman’s lips, though her eyes were still a bit teary. No mother should have to weep over her son’s disappearance. Thankfully, if one could say, no other member of the Lambda crew had any family left; not since the Impact. In this way, Kylo was one very lucky man indeed, as family had proven to become a rare thing these days. A few workers had found their peace in the love they came to hold for one colleague or the other; but none had the tenderness of a parent, except maybe this friend of Amrita’s on Omicron, who still had his sister working by his side.

When Leia embraced Amrita, all thoughts of hierarchy put aside the time of one mutual reassurance, Kylo figured there was still some scarce forms of beauty in this world.

As the weeks passed by, new responsibilities arose. Nearly a month after his release from quarantine, Kylo was accorded a new place as a back up engineer, under the supervision of mechatronics engineer Richard Thabo. Richard was a rather pleasant man to work with, the kind that could occasionally fill the silence with idle chatter, without particularly expecting his new colleague to talk as much. Nevertheless, he knew how to be serious when needed, and worked well.

His presence radiated life, and so Kylo tended to stick with him when he didn’t know where he could find his medic friend. Richard had teased him about their friendship –of course he had–, but nothing unpleasant. Waiting for the world to end, sometimes you have to find ways to pass time.

Mechatronics wasn’t really Kylo’s best domain, but the administrative supervisor had decided he was less likely to mess up if he worked with a few droids rather than if he was entrusted with the maintenance and organization of the software, like he used to on Lambda. The man hadn’t protested; glad as he was that they gave him something to busy himself with.

“Another mockingbird has been reported in the lower decks.” Richard grumbled one morning as they met for briefing. “Strasky says it’s one of the helpers that we couldn’t find the other day.”

A few helper droids had disappeared a few days before –it wasn’t particularly unusual, the WAU having as a task to take care automatically of the droids’ maintenance. However, in the past months, according to Richard, there had been more often than ever disappearances of machines, which would then be found modified and connected to the WAU, a new consciousness giving them the ability to talk. Mockingbirds.

There was, in Kylo’s opinion, an obvious correlation to the number of people suddenly getting scanned by this Dr Chun for her ARK fantasy. Of course the WAU would create mockingbirds if you fed it with brain scans. However, no one seemed to want to listen to his warnings.

They were all so blinded by the ARK.

“It’s not sane to listen to them Mockingbirds.” His colleague ranted. “As soon as we approach it, I distract it, and you go for the cortex chip. One strong pull, and it’s deactivated.”

Kylo nodded. He had taken care of Snoke’s mockingbird, a lifetime and a day before.

The helper machine was some kind of patchwork between a calculating robot and a handler droid, its pathetic form slumped on the ground, its mechanic eyes focused on them. It would be extremely annoying to repair. The helper had been attached to the WAU by these kind of roots the engineer had seen so many times on Lambda, which were coming from a crack in the wall from which structure gel was freely leaking.

“Did Strasky report the leak as well?” Kylo inquired as he took a photo of it, to send to the chief technician.

Before his colleague could answer, a joyful voice came from the machine, and he felt his blood freeze in his veins.

“Kylo! I’m so glad you are here. I think I stuck my foot under a crate, I can’t move, can you help me?”

The man knew there was no use talking to them, answering them; they were beasts like any other, wild grass to weed. But how…?

“Amrita?”

Kylo caught the disapproving look of Richard, whose eyes were screaming to him to stick to the plan and don’t feed it with answers to its nonsensical delirium.

“Of course it’s me, silly! Can’t you see I’m right here?”

His heart heavy and angry, the man approached the robot, and unceremoniously stuck his arm into its mechanical entrails, ignoring the machine’s offended protests. He had to bite his lip hard, almost to the point of drawing blood, to ignore what he was doing to this pathetic copy of his friend. In the most abrupt manner he could muster, he ripped the cortex chip from the machine.

Its voice became deeper and deeper, until it eventually shut down.

The chip in his hand, Kylo felt the anger supplant the nausea of having to pull the plug on his friend; though he knew very well it wasn’t her, just a pale copy. She had allowed that to happen. That damn medic! How could she have been so stupid?

Without a care in the world about leaving Richard to deal with the helper alone, Kylo ran. He ran until he was out of the lower decks, holding the cortex chip so firmly he worried for an instant it might break.

Only when he was frantically opening the door to his friend’s labs did he stop his rush.

“Damn, Kylo! What has you so worked up?” Amrita teased, half amused and half worried at the sight of her friend almost kicking down the door.

As an answer, the man threw the chip on her desk. This is only then she noticed the fury in his look, his disheveled hair and the tensed way he stood there.

“When did you get scanned?”

This seemed to make her uncomfortable, as she looked away for a second to observe the cortex ship that had been sent her way.

“Excuse me?”

Obviously agitated, Kylo paced the floor in front of her, before taking a deep breath and crossing his arms; looking at her dead in the eye.

“Chief Snoke had had his brain scanned three years ago, because of an accident that gave him a concussion. This is how the WAU was able to make a mockingbird out of it. But you? You never had your brain scanned before. Or have you? When did you give in to Chun and her pathetic ARK?”

It was her turn to cross her arms, obviously not liking much the tone he was taking with her. Deep inside, Kylo knew he was being unfair. She had never promised she wouldn’t participate in the ARK, he had only hoped she, of all people, would have understood. Not only hoped, but guessed. What with all the recent suicides, it all seemed to prove his point. They had talked about it before. Then why did she betray…

Betray? Where was this coming from?

“I am big enough to make my own decisions, Kylo. And as much as I respect your opinion on the matter, I respect mine too. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Confused by his own train of thoughts, Kylo stood there for a few moments, mouth hanging open and his eyes flickering everywhere but at her, as he was trying to find what to say.

“Do you have any idea” he started, his voice low and breathless, “how I felt when I heard your voice, your manner of speaking, when this bloody machine started talking? How I felt when your voice was pleading me to let go of you, was screaming in pain as I was unplugging it? Do you have any idea?” it was his turn to plead.

Sensing his change in emotion, Amrita carefully walked towards him and embraced him slightly, putting her head against his shoulder. Her hands came to trace light patterns on his back, like she knew he enjoyed, and breathed deeply. His arms tentatively came to return her hug, pressing her against him with a bit more force than he would have done in any other circumstances.

“I’m sorry it distressed you, Kylo.” She said softly against him. “But you have to understand that it is my choice. It doesn’t mean I value your friendship any less.”

The man hummed in response, still a bit hurt, but feeling slightly better now that she had her arms around him, her heart beating against him. He wouldn’t admit it, but there was some relief in his heart as well, because she had found a way to end the debate without either of them cross with the other, and that he would have hated to have her cross with him.

Distancing herself from him slightly, she lifted a hand to press against his forehead, frowning slightly when she noticed how warm he was.

“Looks like you have some fever. You should rest for a while, you are still recovering, and I don’t think emotional distress is doing you any good.”

His arms did not let her go.

“Just a bit longer.” He whispered, eyes closed. “Please.”

A few days after their fighting and making up, Kylo was called to Strohmeier’s office.

Maybe it was their first meeting that had left him a bit wary of the older man, but Kylo was a bit nervous as he walked towards his office. On his way there, he walked in front of Amrita’s lab, and thought for a second about saying hello, maybe just poking his head at the door like he often did when he walked this way for the various jobs Richard had him do. This never failed to make her laugh, as she sent him on his way; but this time, her door seemed close. Maybe she was off taking care of someone in their bunks; he had heard about one of the technicians being injured by a recalcitrant machine earlier this morning. Poor lad. This was hardly a good start of day.

When Kylo knocked on the security operative’s door, he was taken by a bad feeling in his guts, but he quickly dismissed it as his past history with the man.

The older man didn’t wait a second to tell him to come in. The walls were covered by wood boards, like some kind of parquet, and were decorated by various paintings and photos. A map of the Theta labs was pinned to the wall, next to a bookshelf decorated with a foliage plant and the framed faces of people Kylo would bet were his family.

The relaxed mood the place was giving off contrasted strongly to the tired and tight-lipped Strohmeier. Kylo had seen him on various occasions, always looking more or less stressed and sporting his eternal frown, but somehow, this time it, was different.

“Please, take a seat.” The older man gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

The engineer complied to his demand, sitting himself in a relative comfort. The grey eyes that were focused on him were making more uncomfortable by the second.

“What’s the problem?”

Only a problem could lead you to Strohmeier’s office. He was a bringer of bad news, though Kylo was conscious his work was crucial in their survival. It was only fortunate that these responsibilities fell on the shoulders of such a dedicated man.

Now, seeing him close his eyes, as if not knowing how to phrase whatever bad new he had to say, was definitely worse than being scrutinized by his serious gaze.

“The observation corridor collapsed.” Strohmeier finally spat it out.

Kylo frowned. The see-through observation corridor was the best place in all Theta to hang out. He loved this place. It was the best when he wanted quiet and peace of mind.

“Is the hatch holding?” he inquired.

It wouldn’t do good to have Theta flooded. Thankfully, the hatch leading to the observation corridor was the same kind of door as those of the airlocks, so it should be all right. Maybe they could reinforce it slightly, or condemn it altogether. Yes, they would surely have to do that.

Strohmeier shook his head, looking more defeated than Kylo had ever thought he could look. For a second, he thought about asking if he were feeling good, but the older man beat him to it.

“Dr. Maraj was there when it happened. I’m sorry.”

It took several minutes for Kylo to process what his elder had said. The words didn’t make sense. Not in this order. He had talked to Amrita the night before; they were supposed to meet later in the day. She wasn’t in this corridor. It didn’t make sense. She never went there without him anymore anyway. There must have been an error.

“We managed to recover her body, if you want to see her.”

The younger man closed his eyes, not even realizing he was shaking his head violently.

“No, no, no, no…”

A hand coming to run through his hair, he suddenly stood up and ran out of the office, Strohmeier hot on his heels. Kylo banged on the door leading to his friend’s lab. The automated door wouldn’t open, though he hammered the button to make it do so, all the while screaming at her to let him in. If any answer came, he didn’t hear it, a white noise in his ears making him deaf to anything but his racing thoughts.

She couldn’t be gone. It didn’t make sense.

The older man swiped a magnetic key over the button, unlocking the door.

“I didn’t want you to find her on your way to my office.” He explained in a low voice. “My condolences.”

On the examination table was a body covered by white linen. Kylo didn’t waste a second before ripping it off her. Her tan skin was unnaturally glossy and blue-tinted, her eyes closed. A few gashes were cut in her clothes and skin, though they had long since stopped bleeding; probably from when her body had been pulled out of the rubble of what was once the observation corridor. Her cheeks seemed hollow though her skin looked inflated, and her chest looked like it had been crushed.

“The pressure of the sea crushed her lungs, so she must have drowned in a couple of minutes. She didn’t suffer much.”

Kylo nodded, trying to stifle his sobs, to no avail, as he leaned above her and ran a hand through her hair, the same way she had done to him so many times before.

She really was gone.

The following days, Kylo stayed locked inside his quarters. That way, he could pretend he was still in quarantine, and that none of the events after had happened. He hadn’t met Amrita, and hadn’t become her friend. He hadn’t spent every bit of his free time gravitating around her like she was the bloody sun. And, more importantly, he hadn’t lost her.

A team in diving suits, which he had refused to accompany, had been outside of the base to dig a grave for her; a pretty grave just beside these of the ARK victims, with a pretty plate reading “Eternity Among The Stars”, and a pretty corpse buried under it. A few of them had offered their condolences, though he could see they deserved them too. Strohmeier may have been a hard man, but he had liked her like a niece.

A confusing, guilt-ridden part of Kylo was nagging at his mind, gnawing at his sanity. Telling him he was the reason she had perished. Telling him he was selfish, to monopolize everyone’s wishes though they were grieving as well; but somehow, in his twisted mind, he was the one suffering the most.

This is how, one night after drinking too much of this whiskey he had nicked from the reserve, he found himself playing with a certain cortex chip he had ripped from a certain droid a few weeks before. He hadn’t meant to keep it –actually, he had been set on destroying it after talking with Amrita about it, but, somehow, he had forgotten it on her desk, and had forgotten about it altogether until the day before. He had been asked to go through Amrita’s stuff in the labs to see if there was anything he would like to keep, and had found it locked in a drawer.

Now, sat in front of a rudimentary droid he had crafter out of a few helper robot pieces, he was fixing the mechanical eye of the thing, wondering if it was the good thing to do. Probably not. It wouldn’t be her. But maybe he could pretend? Just for an evening; just the time to make up his mind.

His fingers trembling slightly, he inserted the cortex chip in the droid.

Immediately it came to life, its screen lighting to display her official portrait, as a little red light started flickering above the camera.

“–me go!” it finished screaming, as if he had only unplugged it minutes ago.

When it noted the silence of the room and the only presence of a very drunk Kylo watching it with some kind of wonder and teary eyes, her voice –its voice– took a worried tone.

“Kylo! Are you alright?” it inquired.

The man scoffed, but shook his head at his own behavior. She had always been on the kind side, but it didn’t take much to vex her, and him scoffing was definitely one of those things. He wouldn’t take his chances on upsetting her now; not when he had just heard her voice again for the first time after days of anguish.

“I just need you to tell me something, Amrita.” His voice broke on her name.

This seemed to worry it further; as it agreed the very moment it heard his hoarse voice fail him. It spoke with the same tone she had always used when he was tired and sad, and for a moment, when he closed his eyes, it was close enough for him.

“If you ever died, Amrita, would you… Fuck, why am doing this to myself…” he cried silently in his palm, his shoulders shaking.

Her voice shushed him for a few minutes, and he almost felt her arms around him, though a part of him knew they were his own. His erratic breathing only calmed after hearing her soft voice telling him it was okay to let go, that she would be there when he would be ready.

Wiping his eyes with a shaking arm, he finally spoke again.

“If you ever died, Amrita, would you like for me to join you on the ARK?” he blurted out, his eyes desperately trying to find something human, something of hers on this pitiful carcass of a droid he had in front of him; but the only thing he saw was the cold, red light of the camera.

The next day, despite his raging hangover, Kylo made his way for the labs. His heart hurt when he saw this new medic from Omicron, Dr Nadine Masters, walking in Amrita’s lab, moving things around and settling in. Kylo was half tempted to crash her efforts, to tell her it wasn’t her lab, to replace everything like it once was when his friend was there; but he was exhausted, and honestly didn’t have the heart to hate this new doctor for doing as she was told.

This is how he regretfully walked past the open door of her lab, accepting with a nod the smile Dr Masters directed at him. He ran into Strohmeier then, who greeted him with a hand on his shoulder and a ‘Good to see you out of your room, son’. Kylo nodded at him too; these days, it seemed like the most effort he could do.

When Catherine Chun opened her door to him, he nodded, too.

“Oh, it’s you.” She only said, before closing the door once he was in her lab.

She went back to sit in front of one of her computers, opening a file which made codes pop up on the screen. Kylo detailed the place. She did have one of the most spacious labs in all of Theta; but what caught his attention was not so much the computers, the files, or the numerous cortex chips stocked in shelves, but the neurograph seat in the center of the room. It was grey, hardly different from a pilot seat. The headrest had a slight wavy pattern, and the upper part of the seat, the one that would cover one’s head for the scan, was currently turned up.

“How are you coping?” Dr Chun asked him, her voice a bit shy, as if it was a tough subject to broach for her too.

The silence of the man was all the answer he could giver her. Instead of reciprocating her inquiry, he spoke in a slow, deliberate tone.

“I want you to scan my brain and put me on the ARK.”

This seemed to surprise the intelligence engineer. She turned in her seat, frowning. Kylo’s opinions on the project were hardly a mystery; that he came this day to ask to be a part of it was suspicious at best.

She considered him warily for a moment, before shrugging and turning away.

“You’re too late. Strohmeier put the project to an end ever since Konrad killed himself, two days ago.” She bitterly answered.

The engineer shook his head, disbelieving. Now that he had come so far, there was no way he went back to his bunk without having had his brain scanned. He couldn’t… He couldn’t do that to her. She must be waiting for him, somewhere in Dr Chun’s files. She had always hoped he would come around and be shipped with her on the ARK; she just hadn’t dared to tell him because she knew it would’ve made him angry.

“Please. I have to do it.” He quietly begged, his pride a hard thing to swallow.

Dr Chun sighed and gave him a look; a look he wouldn’t have accepted were things different, but things were what they were and this Nadine Masters was settling in his friend’s office right as they were talking.

“Is it about Amrita? Joining her?”

The look in his eyes when she said her name was a sufficient answer.

“Yes.” The word escaped his lips as if trying to fly away.

Kylo knew admitting it meant trouble, but at the same time, he knew lying wasn’t an option. For all she was reserved and shy, she was far from being dumb. Her clever eyes were scanning his, but he wouldn’t look away. He knew his reddened eyes and dark circles under his eyes were giving away everything there was to tell, and so he stayed silent.

After a few minutes of gauging his intentions, Dr Chun stood up and walked towards him, only stopping a few inches from him, her index poking his chest in a mock-threatening manner; though her eyes were dead serious. But, then again, so were his.

“You better not kill yourself afterwards. In fact, if you do, I will delete your file and nothing will remain of you but your corpse decaying in the sand in front of the station. Understood?”

As if it was what he knew how to do best, Kylo nodded solemnly.

If only a small part of him could find a small part of her again; an impostor on his behalf to be reunited with an impostor on hers; if there were a chance of these two usurpers meeting, and a chance of them being happy, ghosts of what the living used to be…

If only there were these chances, then he would live on in the despair of humanity’s last age, keeping himself alive by thinking that, somewhere among the stars, two impostors in their names were happy together.

“So, you did it, finally? Your brain scan?”

Kylo nodded as he downed another glass of whiskey. His last, he had decided. This was a page he was turning. In the silence of his room, he thought about the screens Dr Chun had showed to him. She had told him his copy would be happy. He would see the surface back. Forests, and lakes, and cities. Kylo had asked her if there would be stars, at night, and Chun had assured him there were.

He wondered if Amrita was watching them right now.

“I did.”

He took a deep breath before screwing the cork back onto the whiskey bottle. He would take it back to the reserve the next day.

“I’m glad you came around. You’re a stubborn one, Kylo Ren, but I knew you would do it eventually.” She teased. “You wouldn’t leave me alone.”

This made him chuckle, his eyes closed as he laid down on his bed. His thoughts focused on the voice of the woman, just next to him. If only for this night, he felt alive. She was so close, almost as real as the feel of the sheets on his skin.

“I couldn’t, now, could I?” he mumbled.

She hummed in response, the same melody she had always hummed when they were together, hanging out in his room or hers; in these moments when she would play with his hair, and sometimes kiss his forehead.

“Amrita?”

She listened.

“Can you tell me again about the first time you saw the stars?”

Her gentle tone lulled him to slumber; the quiet, dark room making her voice echo slightly in the most beautiful way, as the warmth of the sheets against his skin caressed him like the stroke of a lover.

As he fell into the land of dreams and anguish, a red flickering light was tenderly watching over him.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x oc #soma au #alternate universe

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