sixthiterationlogs | Hypothermia and You: A Guide No One Ever Reads

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Hypothermia and You: A Guide No One Ever Reads

WHO: Kylo Ren
WHERE: Near the fountain
WHEN: Evening, November 15th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Incoming angry wet former Jedi with family issues
STATUS: Closed

It took almost no time at all for Kylo Ren to realize he had been submerged. The unfamiliar clothes that clung to his skin were heavy with the weight and chill of the water, and stuck uncomfortably to his skin while he fought to find the right orientation to kick and push himself upward. Everything on his body fought against his upward movement from the thing strapped to his back to the heavy and unfamiliar boots on his feet. When he breached the surface, both hands gripped tightly to the edge of the fountain and he hoisted himself out of its watery depths, rolling over the edge to the hard ground on the other side with deep, gasping breaths for air.

His thoughts were spinning wildly, and a chill clung as tightly to his skin as the over-saturated cotton pressing against him so uncomfortably. His mask and uniform were gone, and although he could feel the weight of the pack resting against his back, he could not sense his weapon. The air was frigid. His wet hair, skin and the drenched cotton and fabric clinging to his body did nothing to hold back the below freezing chill in the air. Rather than sit and gather his thoughts, Ren immediately began to remove his shoes and socks and set them to the side with his backpack. The scrub shirt followed, until Ren was left barefoot with only a tank top and the trousers.

Anyone out in the cold could come across Ren carrying a dripping backpack and bundle of foreign clothes as he deliberately makes his way barefoot into the town. His primary mission: find shelter before losing any of his digits or limbs to the cold. If not encountered in that state, Ren can be found eventually breaking or pushing his way into the first building he comes across in search of shelter from the elements. Especially if the building is giving off smoke or light.

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"I'm livid, not insane." He takes the sheet without even an attempt at pushing her away. It's too cold and the world he has found himself on is too unfamiliar to allow for arguments over survival. He wraps it around himself like a cloak, scanning the nearby buildings before turning his attention to the woman again.

"Someone tried to drown me." Tried and failed. He can only assume it was those traitorous fighters who had tried to ruin everything, and potentially succeeded.

He keeps moving, this time in the direction she came from. It's not safe or smart to stand outside and bicker over semantics or his sanity, and she isn't making outlandish threats in regards to having to cut something off. It was one of his first warning thoughts that pushed him to move.

"I need access to one of these buildings. Which way?" At least he asks. There's a cold chatter to his words despite his attempts to cover it. His own force of will can only do so much against the cold seeping into his core. He had not even had time yet to process the last 24 hours of his life, including where he was, how he had ended up there and the events of his last remembered waking hours.

He's looking at her like he's never seen her before in his whole life. Taken aback, Peggy isn't sure whether this is all just some ploy or whether he truly doesn't know her. Hadn't that man in town lost his memory for a few weeks? And yet, he hadn't come out of the fountain and immediately stripped off all the things that might have kept him warm.

"You don't know me," she says, as if to test him and see whether he's lying and putting her on. "We can head inside one of the buildings if you swear you'll put some warmer clothes on," she insists.

"I would remember if I did." His tone is short, clipped and rough. He glances at her with a look like he's trying to figure out her motives but while he's defensive, he's not willing to fight about things outside, half naked, exposed to the world and weather and unsure of the who, why, where or how of far too many questions to process at once.

"If I can find anything that isn't a wet rag in this bag, I will. I'm not interested in dying of illness on this forsaken planet." Whatever planet it was, it was clearly not where he wanted to be. But Ren is at least apparently willing to cooperate with her, even viewing her as a stranger and potential threat. Even unarmed he knows he can hold his own in a fight, and as there is no blood seeping out of his abdomen or down his face and arm, he can only assume someone managed to get him to a medical droid or med bay at some point.

"I brought you a sheet, didn't I?" Peggy replies, a touch arch considering she's trying to help a person who she thought she knew, but instead, it's a stranger with the very same personality traits that the original one had. He's every bit as frustrating. "Come on, let's go find a warm fire and some dry clothes for you then. I'm sure you'll feel better afterwards."

Perhaps it will even help his mood, if such a thing is possible.

His mood was not always foul. It was something that had come with having his entire universe turned around on him when he found out the truth of his family, his heritage and the Universe itself.

He at least rewards her with a nod and no further protests, following her to the building she made her way for. Once inside, he drops the foreign belongings to the floor, crouching down by the doorway to rub some of the heat back into his feet. As a younger man he had learned survival skills from a man he foolishly believed to be a Jedi Master at the time.

Now he ignores the little voice at the back of his mind thanking the Force that he had the skills to keep himself alive on some of the harsher planets in the universe. His feet were numb and burning with gold fire. He pulls the sheet tighter and watches her with a curious but apprehensive stare. A familiar question she might remember on his lips.

"What planet is this?"

It's like deja vu, honestly. Peggy knows they've had this precise conversation before, so to have it again makes her boggle somewhat. This feels like some sort of additional test to endure, after the canyons, and she takes a deep breath to remind herself that this is his first time here (apparently) and she shouldn't hold that against him. She helps him into the inn and nods towards the fire.

"It's Earth? Maybe," she says, not entirely sure how comfortable she is in saying that. "It behaves like it, at least."

"Earth." Ren repeats the name, testing it on his tongue and searching for a similar name in his mind, but nothing clicks and he sets his boots by the fire instead, almost uncomfortable by the sudden warmth. The scrub top and socks get laid out on the floor, and he drops the bag unceremoniously beside the boots with a slightly wet smack.

"What system is that in?" At least he isn't responding with hostility. He tugs off the tank top, his arms and torso covered in a variety of scars, though none so bad as the one that goes from his forehead down his face and over his shoulder. He's clearly been in a lot of fights, not all of them in his favor. The tank top joins the rest of the clothes near the fire, and he crouches down beside it, keeping his eyes on her and his balance on the balls of his feet in case someone tries to come at him.

Maybe she ought to be writing this down. If this is an indication of anything, it's that apparently they need a proper process when it comes to the new arrivals, because she thinks that she's just repeating herself. Worse, what happens if suddenly he vanishes again and she must do this all over again. "I'm hardly the scientific resource that you'll want for this, but Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy," she says, thinking back to her tutor's lessons and the school's from when she was a girl. She lets her gaze skim over the scars, but never fixates on any of them, knowing how she would feel if someone did that to her scars.

"You were here before, you know," she says, finally thinking that it's best to simply be honest and tell the man. "I've told you all this before, you truly don't remember that?"

Ren is silent while trying to come up with a location or even a detail about the foreign system and planet to no avail. When Peggy shifts gears to the topic of his apparent amnesia he snaps out of searching the databases of his mind and fixes her with a long hard stare, contemplating her words carefully.

For a moment, it actually makes more sense than anything else on the planet so far. How his wounds that should have been fresh from battler were already scarred. The unfamiliar clothes, planet and system. Even the gap in his memories makes sense in a way. Someone must have tampered with his mind. Rey had been too fresh and raw to have managed such a feat during their battle, but there was another Jedi who might have been capable of erasing memories from his mind. One who had been missing, off hiding on a distant planet in an unknown system.

Luke Skywalker. In his mind the name rolls with a venomous touch and his gaze hardens. He had crouched there silently for too long.

"What do you know of the Jedi? The Republic? Empire?" He tests the words, looking for a reaction from his host. If any strike a chord with her, he needs to know. But his reaction to being told he had been there before, or hinting at a break in his memory, is not to disagree, but to present a different series of questions.

"Only what you told me last time," Peggy says cautiously, because she doesn't entirely know what this man is like. After all, she'd had only a few conversations with the man before he'd vanished and now he's here again. She knows that his personality is certainly not the easy-going sort that would take to this easily. "I don't know any of those terms, not in the way you mean, I think. The only Empire I've known are the ones I fought against in the war and Republics are countries," she says.

She doubts that any of this is the right answer, which is hard and frustrating. She wants to give him answers, but she still wants answers herself, at this point.

Ren makes a noise in the back of his throat, like he's trying to swallow down his own frustration. For a moment he just stares into the fire, his hand clenches into a fist at his side.

It's not a great start to hear she fought against an Empire in a war. It puts Ren on edge and makes him choose his next words carefully. He can't bark about the republic being traitorous murders and thieves, and not having an immediate source to direct his frustration and anger at makes things difficult.

He would love to dig inside her mind for his answers, but he doubts she has them. It's not worth exposing himself if he had any form of cover before. He can't imagine he would have, but her willingness to help suggests she did not previously wish to murder him, herself.

He slams his hand on the ground, digging his nails into the floor for a moment. After a deep, unsteady breath he sits at last, his back to the warmth of the fire and his eyes trained back on her.

"If you're correct about knowing me, and speaking to me before, then someone took the liberty of removing memories from my mind." Ren says in a waivering voice, losing his hold on a calmer tone for a moment. What else had he lost, and how much time? What had Skywalker taken from him that he felt confident enough to leave Ren alive with hatred only burning stronger in his mind?

"What's your name." He could pull it from her mind, but he could feel how weak the flow of the Force was through him. He refrains for his own sake, avoiding the inevitable of finding out just how weak he has become.

Peggy merely regards him calmly, her brow arched up primly as she waits for him to weather out whatever emotional little tempest in a teacup that he seems to be so intent on having. She doesn't like hearing that his memories aren't there, because it bodes poorly as far as what happens if a person does vanish, but at the same time, perhaps the memories will return with time.

"Peggy Carter," is her response with a nod of her head. "Of Earth, in a galaxy I don't think you've ever heard of." Which makes for a rather difficult meeting of the minds, but she's determined to keep trying. It's not like she has much else to do here.

"Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren." There's no point in hiding his identity. Not the one he made for himself at least. No one needs to know about his dead past, murdered even more efficiently not too long ago.

"From a planet and system I doubt you know the names of, either. They're not important right now." He pulls himself together, his head cocking slightly to the side. His turmoil seems to have sunk back down below the surface, though there is a fierce intensity to his eyes still.

"Have you ever heard of, or met, a man by the name of Luke Skywalker?"

While she'd spoken to him before, she doesn't recall him ever saying that name before, which means that she's left slightly wary about what the right answer is. "I can't say that I've ever heard that name before," Peggy admits, though it does sound general enough that she might have run into him and forgotten it, but she also feels that given the disparity of their worlds, she also doubts that's actually ever happened.

"What did the Knights of Ren do?" she asks, keeping a close eye on him, lest he suddenly take a turn for the worse when it comes to his body temperature.

"Maintained order in the galaxy where we were needed." Among other things, but those were not things he felt the need to divulge. Ren's work went above even the First Order's military force, and he considered his own agenda a bit more important than theirs.

"Luke Skywalker is a wanted criminal and a dangerous threat." The distate and scorn for the man practically drips from Ren's words. His former teacher and mentor, another of the many traitors. Snoke worried about the threat Luke posed to the First Order, but Ren had other reasons for seeking him out.

"If my memories have been tampered with, he's behind it." He says with a surety he feels, even if it is not the case. It would be foolish for Luke to leave him alive, but the man was a fool of a Jedi with a weak will.

He shifts closer to the fire, pressing his back into the warmth of the bricks around it and draws his limbs in close for warmth. It's a vulnerable and weak position and he loathes that, but he knows the necessity of getting the warmth back into his blood.

"You're not sure this is your planet. How did you get here?"

"The same as you. The same as anyone," is Peggy's response, tucking aside his emphatic insistence that this Luke Skywalker is a criminal. Peggy's not entirely sure, but has a good feeling that perhaps she needs to see both sides to this story before she can actually make any decisions. Besides, who is she to judge someone else's life and world like that?

She eyes him and thinks about when they arrived the first time and how he had behaved, but doesn't recall him getting quite so...well, mad. Peggy settles in a seat near, keeping her back straight and drawn up as tall as she can manage. "It's hardly like anyone has given us any information on where we are. We don't know its name or location or anything else helpful."

Unfortunately for all involved, Ren had previously had someone else to direct his anger at the first time around. Someone who was used to dealing with Ren when his plans went awry.

He listens to her, at least, his anger largely internalized for now. He rests his hands on the floor and endures being watched the way he watches others for a change.

"Wonderful." The sarcasm is there, but his tone has dulled some. "You've been here a while? What sort of organization is there to this place?"

"I've been here for several months," she agrees, "and there's plenty of organization to go around to ensure that we all survive and can live here together peacefully." She strains that word with a pointed look at him, given his bitterness and anger both times around. She feels like it wouldn't hurt to drive home that reminder just a little more. "We've people hunting and gathering, as well as working on a food source to keep us alive."

She nods to the curtains around the walls. "We keep track of things here," she says. "It's a central hub, so to speak."

Months. That wasn't promising at all. Ren took the pointed look. He could read well enough the undercurrent of a warning or threat in her words. A cautionary note that maybe he should play nice with the strangers he didn't trust or know. He would avoid starting any fights for the moment, but he would make no promises or assurances that he would continue to follow their peaceful organization if he found it counter to his own objectives.

He got up and moved to the curtains covered in writing after she drew his attention to them, and studied them a bit closer. One set seemed to have a map, and a particular area near both the river and the canyon walls drew his attention closest, his hand raising to trace the writing faintly without touching it.

It was his hand writing.

"And the natives?"

"We are the natives, as far as any of us can tell," she replies, knowing that with every question, they're just going further down a road that she doubts he's going to appreciate the answers. She eyes him warily and breathes out for a long moment, staring at the map before them. "I've tried to map the canyons as best as I can, but it seems like the horizon always keeps changing on me, without any hint of why or how," she says, tapping her fingers against the outer edges.

"As far as the people who lived here, we don't know what happened to them, but they're not here now. They left behind homes, though, one of them being the one we're currently in."

His train of questions are not helping him and he stares at his writing with an uncomfortably unsettling feeling creeping up his spine. He didn't like not knowing what or how much he had lost.

He sighs and drops his hand, turning to look at the other notes and curtains around the room. He didn't know how to approach the issue of memory loss but he needed to get his head straight.

"My writing is on some of these." He knew his own hand writing well enough to know that. "I was part of this." He gestures around the room, fighting th urge to cross his arms. He would not appear vulnerable. This was fine. He would sort this out.

"This is what there is to show, after months of being here?" It's not intentionally judgmental. He's frustrated and it shows, but he's intentionally shutting that off and slowly forcing himself to process this logically and detached. "I assume the walls aren't ordinary walls. Has anyone kept an eye on the sky? Any ships or streaks of light going by?"

"Yes, you were," Peggy agrees calmly, given that she'd been here the first time when the first Ren had been writing all over these curtains with the information that he had been willing to share with the rest of them. At least it seems that he's coming around to this, at least slightly.

As to his questions, he doesn't seem to understand yet that where they are doesn't have the technology that the future does (and beyond the future, space). "Nothing in the sky but clouds," she says. "No ships, nothing apart from stars. And no way out," she adds. "I'm sorry to say."

Ren takes a slow, deep breath. Anger and panic were not going to get him in any forward direction. For the moment, it was too cold and he was too unprepared to attempt to prove those claims wrong. He knew little about the village, planet, system or people he was trapped with and even less about how he had come to be there, not just once but twice.

"We shall see." It's not a challenge to Peggy but to himself. Ren would not allow himself to be banished to the edge of the known galaxy or further without a fight. This woman, though, wasn't the one he needed to be directing that fight towards. She had been helpful and while not overly knowledgeable, knew more than he did about the planet he was stranded on.

"I assume there's no communication, either, beyond this mapped area?"

"None," she agrees, glad that they're sticking to the objective facts of their situation. "I've received some messenger pigeons, but I'm currently still training them. We've no manner of electronic capabilities of reaching out and there seems to be no escape by foot," she says, which is roughly the shape of the situation.

"Beyond that, we seem to be stuck in a village that pre-dates most radio," she says. "It leaves us with little in the way of existing technology to work with."

"So whatever organization, species, or individuals stranded us here wanted to make sure we were truly stranded." His observation is far from revolutionary. It's an obvious conclusion they are sure to have drawn by now, but at this point Ren just needs to think out loud to work through it in some fashion.

"I would not be surprised to find the planet beyond the canyon empty or at least as cut off as the containment area within. This planet can't be an outpost or trading planet of any kind if no ships are seen or heard. Likely one of the underdeveloped outer rim planets." He could only guess and he had nothing but her word and the map to go on, but talking it out was distracting him from the chill and the wet.

Hypothermia and You: A Guide No One Ever Reads

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I'm so sorry Peggy.

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