Archive of Our Own

When it happens again, it’s a blur on the corner of her eye as she wanders the Falcon.

Rey sees a glimpse of his back, dark and tall. Just a blink, then it vanishes. It leaves her feeling restless, because she can’t stand thinking about it any more. About him. She wants to believe it’s her brain, playing tricks on her exhausted mind. But the fact that it summons the shape of him to disturb her thoughts is as troubling as if it’s all happening again.

She goes back to the crew quarters, shaking her head.

Rey is looking after Rose in the medbay. They are hopping from system to system, refueling and looking for prospective bases in different planets. Rey has stayed on the ship, so that Finn can go help Poe and the General. Meanwhile, she has taken the Jedi tomes out of their drawer.

She is turning the pages carefully, afraid to damage them, when something startles her. It’s a vibration, a hum on the back of her head.

It’s not the first time she has felt this, and it seems Crait wasn’t the last.

Pursing her lips, Rey focuses on her reading. Fingers grasp at the edges tightly, as though trying to gain balance. She hears breathing, and it’s not Rose’s. Tilting her head, Rey squints back, her own breathing becoming more frantic. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the medbay, a snarled mess of black hair concealing his features. Hunching, elbows on his knees and face buried between slightly shaking hands.

He hasn’t noticed her, not yet. Not even through the Force. This takes Rey by surprise, thinking he has been the one pulling the strings after their bond was seemingly broken. Maybe he is, but what Rey is witnessing now is a moment of miserable defeat.

For a fraction of a second, she’s about to reach out instinctively. As she has done in the past, willingly or not. But she stops immediately, hurt and pain burning inside as she stares at the downcast silhouette across the room.

Averting her gaze, she finds a measure of comfort in the wisdom behind ancient manuscripts.

“Stop doing this,” she spats one night cycle, lying on her cot in the cargo hold, eyes shut closed.

This has become a routine, she sensing and seeing him around the Falcon. However, she has never dared to address him again.

The answer takes a few seconds.

“It’s not me.” A thickly, disembodied voice replies. Rey can sense him on the other side, the hum in her head intensifying. She wants to stand up, face him and yell. Hit him hard. But her body stays frozen, sheltered under the blanket.

“How can I believe you?” she retorts bitterly, clenching her fists.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he answers, and it sounds like resignation. Rey takes a peek at him, darting her eyes back at the corner where he stands.

The hold is barely lit, shadows fill every nook and cranny. However, his pale skin is striking against the surrounding blackness. He looms there, hands clenched on each side of his body. He’s looking past her, avoiding her. The lump of his throat moves up as he gulps, his body quivering slightly.

She blinks in surprise.

Watching him like this, Rey has to acknowledge that their unbroken bond is making him feel as shaken and uncomfortable as she feels. An unwanted tear falls down her cheek. What she would give to go back to the icy snow of that forest, clashing blue and red blades and the sense of resolution in her chest as she stroke him down.

She wants so badly to go back to simply hate him.

Next time they talk, it’s him who starts the conversation.

“You want to say it.”

Her eyes move up from the broken lightsaber, which she has been examining in detail whenever she has a moment to spare. She glares at him, eyebrows knitted together, wearing a confused expression. There’s a pressure in the pit of her stomach everytime they find each other.

“What?”

He shifts the weight of his body from one foot to the other, standing rigid far from her. His gazes meets her. It’s the same begging eyes that asked her to join him in Snoke’s throne room.

“That you hate me,” he blurts, flatly. “Yell it, if you need to.”

Rey’s eyes flutter, her lips part, eager to articulate those damned words. This is her enemy, her equal in the dark. She has called him a monster, and he agreed. The right thing to do would be to use this—bond, whatever it is, to locate him. To put the First Order down once they have enough resources. Yet she has never thought about it. Maybe because she doesn’t want anyone—not Finn, not Leia—to find out. Maybe that’s not the only reason.

It makes her sick, it makes her hate herself for it. But she needs to accept her own truths, just as she has done with her parents.

“I don't have time for hate,” she mutters, her lower lip shivering.

Ben almost slips through her tongue, but Rey manages to hold it.

“You are like him.”

It’s been a while since the last time. Under the dim light of the galley, Rey has taken up the task of fixing the training remote she found lying around in the Falcon several days ago. Repairing droids and machines has always had a calming effect on her mind, and she is in much need of it.

She doesn’t lift up her eyes from the Marksman-H model, keeps tinkering with it when his low voice echoes through the room.

“Who?” she asks bluntly after a moment of silence.

“Skywalker,” he answers in a whisper.

Rey looks up, throws him an irritated glare. The remote falls onto the table with a loud clank.

“What do you mean?”

He paces around the room for a bit (that’s when she wonders—where is he? What does he see now, when they meet like this?), then his feet stop, lost in thought.

“You rushed in, trying to save poor Ben from the dark side, no second thoughts. Thinking yourself victorious,” he mumbles, averting her gaze. “Just like he did with Vader.”

Rey has heard the stories, from Leia and other Resistance fighters. The irony isn’t lost on her, but the parallels only help to increase the sense of failure she has carried since running away from Ahch-To.

“You got what you wanted, though,” Rey spouts sourly; anger, shame and disappointment mixed in between words. “You have more power now than Vader ever had.”

It’s like the sentence pierces through his chest, as though she has stabbed him with her saber. He lowers his head, tight-lipped, his fists clenched and trembling. Reading him requires almost no effort, his face and body ooze all of his emotions like an open book.

For a short moment, Rey wonders how he could be so miserable after overcoming his greatest fear. A spark of sympathy grows back inside her, and it hurts.

They are travelling through hyperspace into a new system, the ETA being at least two hours. Since Rey left Jakku, she has marvelled at the blue tunnel of energy surrounding the ship. That is the reason she is cozied up in the cockpit of the Falcon, while the rest of the freighter is buzzing with activity.

She uses these moments to meditate and reflect on the Force, the power inside her, as Master Luke taught her. However, his presence lingers this time in the cabin, and they are past ignoring each other.

“You know,” Rey starts abruptly, fidgeting. Her voice comes out shakier than expected, “he'd never have done it. He regretted the thought as soon as it came.”

She senses traces of sorrow coming from him, as if she could peek in his mind with the Force. But it’s all buried under layers of anguish, pain, rage. It’s like looking into a sandstorm. Fearing she’d be swept away if prying deeper, Rey pulls back rapidly. He must have noticed, yet remains in silence, his gaze fixed somewhere else.

He takes a deep breath, lips pressed in a thin line. “It doesn’t change what I have become.”

Rey silently agrees, flashes of a red lightsaber piercing through Han Solo’s chest in the dark. Still, the raw hatred from before is nowhere to be found—replaced by quiet, deep sadness.

Rey’s camped next to the Falcon when they meet again. The Resistance has landed in a rainy, tropical planet in the Outer Rim—and it’s pouring. General Leia has dispatched Poe, Finn and other soldiers to scout and locate an old Rebel base, built inside ancient ruins. Then she has encouraged Rey to keep working on the broken lightsaber, the kyber crystal still trapped inside the metal hilt.

But the rain calls to her, so fascinating in her still desert-grown eyes. So she has put up a small fire, sheltering under the old creaky structure of the freighter. The damaged hilt lies in her lap, and Rey’s unsure of what to do with it. When she notices him, sitting across the fire —as if he were actually there—, she is tempted to ask. Then she thinks better, and decides to break the ice with a different subject.

“Your mother told me about who you were named after,” she puts simply, her expression obscure. “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Those names still feel like conjuring up myths, not actual men and women that existed.

“It makes for an interesting fiction, nothing else,” he adds, reaching out with a gloved hand to the rain drops. Rey almost glimpses a hint of amazement and disbelief at the nature of their bond and its inner workings.

“She named you after her only hope,” Rey whispers, tears prickling in her eyes.

Leia has shared another revelation with her—that she had sensed his son through the Force during the attack on the fleet, and that he hadn’t fired against her when he had the chance. Once again, Rey wishes so badly she could go back to see him as Kylo Ren, as he sees himself in self-loathing—a monster, a creature in a mask. Not as the man wearing his emotions and insecurities so clearly. Not as Han or Leia’s son. Not as Ben.

“She also hid where I came from,” he halts, almost hesitatingly. “I had a family, and they all lied to me,” he states coldly, but his glare is watery against the fire sparks. “None of that matters. That’s why I told you to let go of the past.”

There’s the same intensity in his stare, as in the aftermath of their fight against Snoke’s guard. Rey gulps, but she has found her own peace since then. A resolution that helps her face him without any lingering doubts. She remembers Master Luke’s lessons, the Jedi tomes she stole, and his last sacrifice.

Rey inhales deeply and straightens her shoulders, clasping her fingers around the shattered lightsaber. “If you let go of the past, you will never learn anything, and you will make the same mistakes. Just like you’re doing.”

His mouth quirks and he swallows hard, glistening eyes wide open.

She wants to add You can still fix this, but Rey is not ready to go down that path again. Not yet.

The soothing hum of the Falcon is broken by the sound of his voice, echoing inside the walls of the cargo hold.

“You didn’t kill me, back in the Supremacy.”

Rey can hear the rustling of his clothes and boots as he shifts nervously. She eyes him, hands clasped over her chest. Her answer is bathed in contempt.

“That’s an excellent observation.”

Then she hears a few steps, rough leather stomping against the floor. When Rey turns her head, as she lies in her cot, he is kneeling beside her. It’s easy to forget how he is not physically there, as she is forced to look at his face. Eyes redder and almost desperate, lips sucked in, traces of tears on his cheeks.

“May I know why?” He ponders faintly, in a tone that could resemble pleading—and he has begged her before. Please. Rey struggles to breath, letting out a gasp. “Why?” he insists.

He wishes he had died there, she realises. This is not what the enemy, the new Supreme Leader, should look like.

Still, she takes it with a heavy heart, even if he doesn’t deserve her pity. Yet she doesn’t really have an answer for his question, because everything is blurry now in her memories.

Sitting up, she props herself on one elbow and throws him a fierce stare.

“Maybe I thought you were already dead,” she lies with bitterness, just to hurt him. “When we touched hands, I… I was so sure of what I had seen.” He gulps, eyes locked on her, just looking at her. It sends shivers through her body. “Perhaps it was all Snoke’s manipulation, perhaps not. I don’t know.” There is hesitance before she manages to continue, taking a deep breath. She straightens up, heart pounding hastily. “But I have realised something. Luke couldn’t save you and neither could your mother, your father or I…” Their faces are so close she can feel the warmth of his body, even if several lightyears separate them, “because you have to do it yourself, Ben.”

A single tear rolls down her face.

She can expect a fit of rage. Instead, he doesn’t pull back, remaining still.

His head lowers, bowing before Rey in a meaningful silence.