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It comes out like a whisper.
The weak voice calling out to him.
Ben.
He felt it, the moment it happened. A pain tore through his heart against his will. He felt the disruption in the Force.
And he knows she felt it too, for he swears he saw her for just a second. For some reason the Force chose to connect them at that moment. Just for a fleeting glance. She didn’t even look up at him from where she was sitting. But he narrowed in on the tears streaking down her face before a different pain ripped through his side, breaking the connection.
He had just landed on the warring planet when it happened. The brief, unwanted connection took him so much by surprise that someone was able to land a shot on him. Blaster wound right to the side.
Of course it had to be right where the Wookiee shot him.
Kylo remembers falling to his knees, not being able to separate the two pains; the one rapidly growing in his heart and the one spreading across his torso.
His moth— no.
General Organa is dead.
The next thing he can recall is waking up in the medbay hooked up to wires, bacta patch covering his side. He remembers ripping the wires out and storming away, desperately needing to be alone. To destroy something. The walls ended up scorched with saber marks all the way back to his room.
That was two days ago.
———
Kylo is looking out the viewport in his private quarters, absentmindedly prodding the bruise around the slowly healing wound on his side. The pain from poking it reminding him of his weakness; he let his guard down. Because of sentiment. As the Supreme Leader of the First Order he should be above sentiment. Above weaknesses.
He feels her before he sees her. She brings that same lull in the Force with each of their connections, blocking out everything else but her. The hand previously poking his bruise subconsciously relaxes down to his side.
He’s come to treasure these moments; everything going quiet. He hasn’t had this kind of silence in a very long time. His mind hasn’t known peace like this in his whole life.
Kylo doesn’t turn around and she doesn’t make a noise. Maybe she’s busy, maybe she’s trying to ignore him.
Curious, he finally turns around to face her. She’s dressed in an all black version of her normal clothes except her outer wrap is more flowy, almost dress-like, like she’s trying to look fancier but yet still practical in case something should happen. She looks more womanly than normal.
Plainly beautiful.
Secretly, he likes seeing her dressed in all black.
Tear tracks are fresh on her face though he can see she’s trying to appear stronger than she feels. Inside he knows she’s crumbling slowly. As much as Kylo wants to reach out and comfort her, he doesn’t, keeping his features passive.
She finally notices him staring at her. She appears to nod her head to someone she is with and hugs them.
He can’t see who she’s hugging, but Kylo’s jealousy flares anyway. It better not be that traitor. Or the pilot.
The person seems to have walked away because she looks back up at him and glares. “This really isn’t a good time.”
“Well it’s not like I chose it, Jedi,” he snaps back automatically in response to her tone.
She glares at him, looking like she’s going to hurl some venomous remark, but then thinks better of it. It’s too exhausting to fight with him.
“I’m not doing this, Ben. Not today,” she says, looking at him wearily.
“And why not?”
Her glare begins to resurface through her exhaustion. “Ben, I’m serious. Not today.”
“And why not today?”
She stays silent, refusing to answer him. Tears are beginning to form in the corners of her eyes, her nose crinkling with her glare.
“Why not today?” He knows he’s angering her, but he’s learned he has to be insistent to get any type of answer out of her.
“Because I’m currently at your mother’s funeral!” she snaps, yelling at him in frustration.
His face instantly sobers, all pestering ceasing to a sudden halt. He knows well enough that if he keeps pushing she’ll become completely furious with him. Or worse; the bond will close.
“She died two days ago. Or did you not know?
“Of course I knew,” he mutters quietly out of the side of his mouth.
She brushes off his answer. “So I’m so very sorry, Supreme Leader, but I don’t feel like fighting with you today.”
He tries not to but he flinches at the moniker. He should take pride in the title, but when it comes from her lips it only makes him feel shame.
The two lapse into a silence, neither one really having anything to say to the other. Rey, too exhausted, and rightfully fuming, to talk to him, and Kylo, too busy with all of the thoughts thrashing around in his head.
Kylo returns to looking out the viewport in his room, faintly glaring at the galaxy, his hands clenched down at his sides. He strengthens his resolve, putting on his normal, indifferent mask before breaking the silence.
“It’s a good thing. Now nothing will stand in my way.”
Shocked, Rey turns to face him. She can’t believe Ben Solo could be this cold. “You don’t really mean that.”
He turns around to look over at her, his face still stoic. “I do. The past is finally dead. It’s what I’ve wanted all along.”
She moves towards him a bit, her eyebrows furrowing in anger at his words. “How can you even say that? Your mother is dead and your response is “Good”?”
Kylo doesn’t answer her. Just continues staring at her, attempting to keep all his emotions off of his face. Trying to keep his emotions out of his eyes is a much harder task. Especially since Rey has become so adept at reading his eyes.
Rey walks up to him and stands right under his nose, looking up at him. That fierce expression back on her face. “I don’t think you mean that at all. I know you loved your mother. You can’t hide it from me, Ben Solo.”
She places her hand on his chest, just a little bit above his heart. His muscle twitches slightly under her hand. He’s not used to such light fingers on his skin. Such caring, tender touches.
“You can try and lie to yourself all you want, but I know it broke you inside when you felt it. Just as it broke you to kill Han.”
He flinches at his father’s name. Her words remind him of Snoke. The deed split your soul to the bone. His facade slowly begins to crack against his will, his emotions bleeding through the crevices.
Rey’s face softens, gazing up at him with such understanding. “Your name was the last thing she said.”
“I know,” he mutters out, his voice hoarse.
Her brows furrow again at his answer. “How? The bond wasn’t open and you weren’t there.”
“Actually it did open, but just for a brief second. You didn’t even look up from what I now assume was her bedside. But that’s not how I know.”
Rey doesn’t give any indication that his assumption is correct, but he knows innately that it is. Of course Rey would be by his mother’s side while she died. That’s just who Rey is. Caring for every person she meets. Even a monster like himself.
He looks up to the ceiling for a moment and huffs in frustration. “That damn woman purposely reached out to me, in her dying moments. She knew what she was doing. She knew it would haunt me the rest of my life.”
“Ben...” Rey starts warily.
“No!” he snaps, interrupting whatever she was going to say.
He brushes her off and walks away, pacing slightly. His mind and mouth are working a mile a minute.
“She reached out to me, tapping into a bond that is normally well closed off, and she said my name. On her deathbed. Her last words, and she chooses to call out to me. Now I have to live with that thought forever, that she could’ve said anything else and chose my name for some reason... Probably hoping it would break me enough to come home. Well the woman wasted her last words on a false hope.”
“Ben,” she says again, calmly.
His head swivels quickly to face her interruption of his rant. He’s slightly out of breath from the tirade he just went on, his anger elevated. Her voice saying his name so tenderly makes his attention abruptly change from his mother to her. All his focus is on her.
His eyes follow her as she walks up and places her hand on his chest again, just as lightly as before. His muscle doesn’t twitch this time from being shocked at her hand. This time it feels right; like her hand belongs there and his muscle is used to the gentle pressure.
Rey stares up into his eyes, her face fierce yet tender.
“She didn’t say your name as some trick. She knew better than to think that would work… She said your name, because you're her son and she loves you. So that you could hear it one last time, and remember that she loves you… So that maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive her.”
“Well she was too late,” he sneers out, but it’s not as passionate as he means for it to be.
That woman thinks that her apology means anything to him now? It didn’t work for Han Solo and it didn’t work for Skywalker. Why should he forgive her? Just because she said his name through a bond that won’t go away no matter how many times he’s tried to break it?
“She was a foolish woman to think so.”
He just insulted the woman she grew close to, his own mother, yet all Rey does is look at him with that caring face of hers. He can practically see her heart breaking for him yet again in her eyes. When doesn’t it break for him?
The reason he can pinpoint all of Rey’s insecurities and emotions about her family is because he shares the same. He knows the same feeling of abandonment. Of being left by people you think love you. Of being betrayed and hurt by them. Over and over again. His whole life.
And yet they all ask for his forgiveness.
Well their apology came too late.
20 years too late.
He doesn’t back down. His emotions and thoughts are clouded when it comes to the subject of his family and he doesn’t think rationally. He uses his heart instead of his head. And his heart has turned so jaded over the years that it barely resembles a heart anymore.
It seems Rey is finally realizing that there’s no getting through to him about this because she drops it and slowly lets her hand fall from his chest.
On its way down, it brushes his bruise, causing Kylo to gasp quietly and twitch to the side. Rey’s eyebrows instantly furrow at his reaction. He sees the sudden curiosity and worry in her eyes and tries to play it off like nothing happened.
It doesn’t work.
“Rey, it’s nothing,” he says, quickly trying to calm her fears.
Rey ignores him and reaches out, lifting up his shirt despite his protesting. She gasps when she sees the huge bruise peeping out from behind the bacta patch covering his side. She prods it carefully with gentle fingers. Kylo winces and sucks in air through his teeth, trying not to make any whimper-like noise.
“Oh, Ben,” Rey breathes out.
If Kylo didn’t know any better he could swear that tears are filling the corners of her eyes. But that’s impossible.
Rey looks up into his eyes for a moment before looking back down at his injury. Oddly, she doesn’t ask where or how he got it. Knowing her, she can probably assume. That or it’s written on his face and she reads it with ease.
With a slight hesitation, she reaches out and places both of her hands flat on his side as gently as possible. Kylo watches in pure curiosity and admiration as she closes her eyes. Her brows furrow even more and she bares her teeth slightly in concentration.
He can feel the Force flowing around the both of them as well as the Force bleeding out of her hands into his side, healing his wound. He’s always so mesmerized when he watches her use the Force, such a power to be reckoned with. His equal. She should be by his side. He wishes she was by his side. He wouldn’t feel so alone with her by his side.
But she refuses to be. And it kills him.
When Rey’s finished she slowly opens her eyes and removes her hands, looking down at her handy work proudly.
“There. All better.”
At least one part of me is healed, he thinks bitterly. If only she could heal the rest.
He looks down at her face, wondering how in the hell did something as wonderful and light as her has come to care for a monster like him. He doesn’t want to believe it’s true. Nothing in his life has ever been that good. At least nothing that doesn’t eventually leave him.
“Rey...” he whispers quietly, as if her name is sacred and someone like him shouldn’t be allowed to utter it.
“Ben, no,” she whispers back, automatically knowing what his next sentence is going to be.
He says it anyway.
“Rey, just join me. We can fix the galaxy. I know we can,” he urges insistently.
“Ben…” She shakes her head at him sadly. She just wants him to stop asking.
“Please,” he pleads in barely a whisper, just like he did on the Supremacy.
She looks at him and a tear rolls down her cheek. “I can’t," she croaks out, her voice cracking from emotion.
He doesn't have the chance to respond before she disappears in front of his eyes.
The world around him comes alive again, buzzing loudly, yet he doesn’t feel any of it. With her, leaves the peace and quiet of his room, of his mind. But she also takes the warmth from the room, leaving him cold; standing in the dark by himself.
Always by himself.