Captive Constellations

The elevator stopped between floors forty-seven and forty-eight. I felt it in my knees first, that small lurch of a machine giving up, and then in my stomach when the lights flickered and held at a dim, sickly amber.

I was pressed against the back wall, one hand braced on the polished brass rail, the other holding the hem of my dress clear of the floor. The red silk caught the low light and threw it back in tiny sparks, like I was wearing a handful of dying stars. My cape pooled around my ankles, heavy and hot. I had been in that elevator for maybe forty seconds before it died. Long enough to notice the man in the corner.

He was tall. That was the first thing. Tall in a way that made the elevator feel smaller, like he was taking up more than his share of the air. Black hair fell past his shoulders, thick and unwashed, and he wore a mask of silver and black that covered everything but his mouth. That mouth was a thin line, pale, pressed shut like he was holding something in. His clothes were all dark layers, rough fabric, scuffed boots. He looked like he had walked out of a fire and forgotten to change.

I knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was.

Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader of the First Order. The man who had killed his own father, burned whole systems, and wore his violence like a medal. He was also, apparently, terrible at elevator maintenance.

He did not move when the car stopped. He stood exactly where he had been, arms crossed, head tilted slightly as if he was listening to something I could not hear. The mask made it impossible to read him. That was the point, I think.

I cleared my throat.

“Is this your doing?”

The mask turned toward me. Slow. Deliberate. The amber light caught the ridges of the metal, the dark hollows where his eyes should be.

“Why would it be my doing?”

His voice came through a modulator, flat and mechanical. It scraped against my ears like metal on stone.

“Because you’re the one with the temperamental space wizard powers,” I said. “And because you looked at the control panel like you wanted to strangle it.”

A pause. The modulator hummed.

“I always look at things that way.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

He did not respond. He turned his head back to the doors, standing there like a statue, like he had all the time in the galaxy and intended to use every second of it. I watched the back of his head, the way his hair fell in heavy curtains, the tension in his shoulders. He was not relaxed. He was coiled, ready, waiting for something to attack.

I decided I did not like being in a box with a coiled predator.

I pushed off the wall and walked to the control panel. The buttons were dark. No emergency signal. No response when I pressed the call button three times in a row. The silence on the other end was absolute.

“Fantastic,” I said.

“The emergency systems are separate from the main power grid,” he said from behind me. “They should be operational.”

“They’re not.”

“Then someone disabled them.”

I turned to look at him. He had not moved. “Why would someone disable the emergency systems in an elevator you were riding in?”

The mask stared at me. I stared back.

“I have enemies,” he said.

“Everyone has enemies. Most of them don’t trap you in elevators.”

“Most people aren’t me.”

I could not argue with that. I turned back to the panel and pressed every button in sequence, then all at once, then in a pattern I made up on the spot. Nothing. The car sat between floors, silent and dead, and the air was already starting to feel thick.

I stepped back and smoothed my dress. The red silk was warm against my palms. I had chosen it for the reception, for the eyes of a hundred delegates, for the message it sent. I am young. I am soft. I am not a threat. Look at my curls and my lips and my bare shoulders and underestimate me. That was the game. That was always the game.

But there was no one here to play for except a masked warlord who had probably killed more people than I had met.

I sat down on the floor. The carpet was a deep burgundy, plush, probably expensive. I gathered my cape around me and crossed my legs and looked up at him.

“Well,” I said. “This is going to be a long few hours.”

He finally moved. He uncrossed his arms and walked to the opposite wall and sat down with his back against it, legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankle. The mask stayed on. He folded his hands over his stomach and tilted his head back and seemed to go to sleep.

I watched him for a full minute. He did not move. His chest rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm. I could not tell if he was actually sleeping or if he was pretending. With a mask like that, you could not even see his eyes.

I decided I did not care.

I pulled out my personal comm. No signal. Of course. I tucked it back into the hidden pocket in my cape and tried to think of something useful to do. I could scream. I could pound on the doors. I could try to pry them open with my bare hands, which would accomplish nothing except breaking my nails and making me look desperate.

I was the Empress of the Lament Venus. I did not look desperate.

I sat in silence and watched the minutes pass on the tiny chrono embedded in my bracelet. Five. Ten. Fifteen. The air got warmer. The amber light did not change. The man across from me did not move.

I started to talk.

“My mother used to tell me that elevators were death traps. She said that if you had any sense, you would take the stairs. She said that putting your life in the hands of a machine was the height of foolishness. She said a lot of things.”

Silence.

“She was assassinated when I was sixteen. Poison in her wine. I found her in her chambers with her eyes open and her mouth frozen around a scream that never came out.”

The mask did not turn. The chest did not stop its rhythm.

“I took the stairs for three years after that. Every meeting. Every appointment. Every time I had to go anywhere that was more than three floors up, I walked. I had guards with me. They hated it. I did not care.”

I picked at a loose thread on my cape.

“Then I became Empress and I realized that taking the stairs was not a good look. It made me seem afraid. So I got back in elevators. I told myself I was not afraid anymore. I told myself that the universe had already taken the worst thing it could take from me, and what was left was just living.”

I looked at him.

“I am still afraid.”

The modulator hummed. The chest rose and fell.

I waited.

“Fear is useful,” he said. The voice was flat, mechanical, but there was something underneath it. Something almost human. “It keeps you alive.”

“It also keeps you small.”

“Small things survive.”

“Small things get stepped on.”

He did not answer. I watched the mask, the dark hollows where his eyes should be, and I wondered what he looked like under all that metal and leather. I wondered if he was young or old, handsome or plain, scarred or smooth. I wondered if he had ever been in love.

I asked him.

“Have you ever been in love?”

The rhythm of his breathing changed. Just a hitch. Just a fraction of a second where the pattern broke and then reformed.

“That is not an appropriate question.”

“We’re trapped in an elevator. There’s no one here to enforce appropriateness.”

“I am the Supreme Leader of the First Order.”

“And I am the Empress of the Lament Venus. That means we’re equals in this box. And I asked you a question.”

The mask turned toward me. The amber light caught the ridges and shadows and made his face look like a skull.

“Yes,” he said. “I have been in love.”

“What happened?”

“She died.”

The words were flat. The modulator stripped them of emotion. But I heard it anyway. The thing underneath. The thing he was trying to hide.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Do not be sorry. It was a long time ago.”

“That does not make it hurt less.”

He did not respond. He turned his head back to the ceiling and closed himself off again. I watched him for a moment longer and then looked away, giving him the privacy he clearly wanted.

The chrono on my bracelet ticked forward. Twenty minutes. Thirty.

The heat was getting worse.

I fanned myself with my hand, useless gesture, and felt sweat beading at my hairline. My dress was cut low, sleeveless, and still I was too warm. The cape was not helping. I shrugged it off and folded it beside me, and the air hit my bare shoulders like a small mercy.

He was watching me. I felt his gaze through the mask, that invisible pressure of attention.

“You are warm,” he said.

“Observant.”

“There is a cooling unit in the panel. It is not functioning.”

“I noticed.”

He stood up. The movement was fluid, sudden, and I tensed without meaning to. He walked to the control panel and put his hand against it. I watched his fingers press into the metal, the way his knuckles went white with pressure.

“I can force it open,” he said.

“The doors?”

“The elevator. I can force the car to move.”

“Can you do that without killing us?”

He turned his head toward me. The mask caught the light.

“I do not know.”

“Then don’t.”

He stood there for a long moment, hand on the panel, body still. Then he stepped back and sat down again. This time he sat closer. Three feet between us instead of six. I could see the detail on his gloves, the scuffed leather, the reinforced knuckles. I could smell him. Leather and smoke and something metallic, like blood.

“Why did you become Empress?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard. I blinked at him.

“Excuse me?”

“You are young. You are soft. You do not look like a ruler. Why did they choose you?”

I felt my spine straighten. “No one chose me. I took it.”

“Why?”

“Because someone had to. Because the alternative was chaos. Because my mother died and left a hole in the universe and I was the only one willing to fill it.”

He was still watching me. I could feel the weight of his attention, heavy and strange.

“You do not believe that,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You do not believe what you just said. You are repeating a story you have told yourself so many times that you have forgotten it is a lie.”

I stared at him. My heart was beating faster. I did not know why.

“You do not know me,” I said.

“I do not need to know you. I can feel you.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is. The Force connects everything. I can feel your fear and your anger and the thing you are hiding from yourself.”

I stood up. The motion was too fast, too sharp, and I swayed on my heels. He did not move. He sat there, looking up at me through that mask, and I wanted to hit him.

“You don’t get to do that,” I said. “You don’t get to crawl around in my head and pretend you know me.”

“I am not pretending.”

“Shut up.”

He shut up. I stood there, breathing hard, and the silence stretched between us like a wire. I could feel my pulse in my throat, in my temples, in the space behind my eyes. I was angry. I was more than angry. I was furious in a way I had not allowed myself to be in years.

Because he was right.

I sat down. Not gracefully. I dropped onto the carpet and pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The silk of my dress pooled around me, red and bright and ridiculous. I felt like a child.

“I did not mean to upset you,” he said.

“Yes you did.”

A pause.

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

I laughed. It came out sharp and bitter, a sound I did not recognize.

“At least you’re honest.”

“I am many things. Honest is not usually one of them.”

“Why start now?”

He was quiet for a long moment. The amber light flickered and held. The heat pressed against my skin.

“Because I am tired,” he said. “Because I have been wearing this mask for so long that I have forgotten what my own face looks like. Because I am trapped in a box with a woman who is not afraid of me, and I do not know what to do with that.”

I looked at him. The mask. The black hair. The hands folded in his lap.

“Take it off,” I said.

He did not move.

“Take off the mask.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I take it off, you will see me. And I do not want to be seen.”

I nodded. I understood that more than I wanted to admit.

“Okay,” I said. “Then don’t.”

We sat in silence. The chrono ticked forward. Forty minutes. Fifty.

The heat got worse.

I was sweating now, truly sweating, the kind of sweat that ruined makeup and made curls go flat. I could feel it running down my back, pooling at the base of my spine. My dress was sticking to my thighs. I shifted, trying to find a cooler spot on the carpet, and there was none.

He was watching me again.

“You are uncomfortable,” he said.

“I’m dying.”

“You are not dying.”

“I’m dying of heat. It’s a thing. It happens.”

He stood up. I watched him walk to the control panel and press his palm against it. The metal groaned. I felt the vibration through the floor, a low hum that built and built until the lights flickered and went out entirely.

Darkness. Complete and absolute.

I heard my own breathing. I heard his.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I redirected the power from the emergency systems to the cooling unit.”

“The lights are off.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“I know.”

I felt the air change. A current of cold, thin and sharp, cutting through the heat. I sighed. I could not help it. The relief was physical, a loosening in my chest, a softening in my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You are welcome.”

I heard him sit down. Closer this time. I could sense him in the dark, a presence, a weight. I did not feel afraid. I should have felt afraid. He was a killer, a monster, the thing that children in my system used to scare each other at night. But in the dark, with the cold air washing over my skin, he felt like just a man.

“Tell me something true,” I said.

“What?”

“Something true. Something you have never told anyone.”

The silence stretched. I waited.

“I killed my father,” he said. “I told myself it was necessary. I told myself it was the only way. But the truth is that I did it because I was angry. Because he left me. Because he chose her over me. Because I wanted him to hurt the way I hurt.”

I did not speak. I let the words settle in the dark between us.

“I have regretted it every day since,” he said. “Every single day.”

I reached out in the darkness. My hand found his arm. The leather of his sleeve was warm, rough under my fingers. He did not pull away.

“That’s a heavy thing to carry,” I said.

“I am strong.”

“Everyone has a limit.”

He did not answer. I left my hand on his arm for a moment longer, and then I pulled it back. The darkness felt different now. Fuller. Like there was more in it than just air.

“My turn,” I said. “Something true.”

I took a breath.

“I am terrified that I am not good enough. That I am playing a role I do not understand, that everyone will eventually see through me, that I am just a girl in a dress pretending to be an empress. I am terrified that my mother’s death was my fault. That I should have been there. That I should have stopped it. That I am not strong enough to carry what she left behind.”

I stopped. My voice was shaking. I hated that it was shaking.

“I have never told anyone that,” I said.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can feel it. The same way I can feel the heat of your skin from three feet away. The same way I can hear your heartbeat in the dark.”

I felt my face go warm. That was not the heat. That was something else.

“You can hear my heartbeat?”

“Yes.”

“That’s invasive.”

“It is a side effect.”

“Of what?”

“Of being near you.”

The words hung in the air. I did not know what to do with them. I did not know what they meant. I did not know if they meant anything at all.

The lights flickered back on. The amber glow returned, dim and sickly, and I blinked against it. He was sitting closer than I expected. Two feet. Maybe less. I could see the detail on his mask, the scratches and dents, the places where the metal had been repaired.

I could see his eyes.

Not through the mask. I could not see through the mask. But I could see them anyway, in the way he held his head, in the angle of his jaw. I could feel them on me.

“What happens when we get out of here?” I asked.

“We go back to being enemies.”

“Is that what we are?”

“It is what we are supposed to be.”

“And what we are?”

He was quiet. The amber light flickered. The cold air kept coming.

“I do not know,” he said.

I nodded. I looked at my hands, at the red silk pooled around me, at the scuffed toes of his boots.

“I do not want to be your enemy,” I said.

“I do not want to be yours.”

“Then what do we do?”

He reached up. His gloved hand found the edge of his mask. I watched his fingers curl around the metal, and I held my breath.

He pulled it off.

The face underneath was young. Younger than I expected. Pale skin, dark eyes, a mouth that was soft and sad. There was a scar across his cheek, a thin white line, and shadows under his eyes like he had not slept in weeks. He looked tired. He looked human.

He looked at me.

“My name is Ben,” he said.

I looked at him. At his face. At his eyes. At the way his hands trembled slightly, holding the mask in his lap.

“Hello, Ben,” I said.

His mouth curved. Just a little. Just enough.

“Hello,” he said.

The elevator lurched. The lights flickered. The car started moving, slow and grinding, pulling us back up toward the world above.

We did not look away from each other.

The doors opened on the forty-eighth floor. The light from the hallway was bright and white and harsh, and I blinked against it. There were people waiting. Guards. Attendants. A woman in a sharp gray uniform who looked relieved to see us.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she said. “We apologize for the delay. There was a malfunction in the main power grid.”

I stood up. I smoothed my dress. I picked up my cape and draped it over my arm.

“No apology necessary,” I said.

I stepped out of the elevator. I did not look back. I could feel his eyes on me, that weight, that attention. I walked down the hallway with my head high and my back straight, and I did not let anyone see that my hands were shaking.

I did not see him again that night.

But I felt him. In the back of my mind, in the space behind my ribs, in the place where I kept the things I did not say. I felt him like a thread, pulling, connecting us across the crowded room.

I did not cut it.

I let it pull.