Chapter Text
Ben
After Crait, the only thing keeping Kylo Ren alive, was his reputation.
It was Snoke’s last parting gift; the blessing of his forged notoriety. Despite all that had happened, and all he had been through, he was still the masked, wild boy, rippling with power and authority. So feared was Kylo Ren, that he could lead an entire revolution while barely able to hang onto his own sanity.
His fists ached from the strain of clenching them; around his own fingers, around the force, around his blade. He was blindly strangling himself through the war, destroying anything in his pathway to keep his foothold on his power.
Hux had called him ‘ unhinged’ and he wasn’t wrong.
The previous day, he’d swept an entire line of troopers to their deaths in the hangar merely because one of them had failed formation. Afterwards, he had collapsed on himself in his own quarters, overcome with shame and conflict.
He felt the twitch under his left eye. It plagued him at all hours of the day, reminding him of the precarious and fragile state of his mind.
He slammed his fist into the lift’s main panel, taking it up to the command center of his destroyer.
After all, he was supposed to be finding her. The entire First Order was meant to retrieve her.
Her .
Rey of Jakku. The scavenger. The fledgling Jedi. The ‘last’ Jedi.
The lift doors hissed open and he stepped out onto the bridge, cape billowing at his back. The cadets all looked fiercely at their screens, more inclined to look uselessly busy than to get caught doing nothing and risk death by the Supreme Leader. He spoke to no one, and the generals on the bridge fled to the rear of the room, hiding behind their consoles and screens, blindly punching buttons and flipping switches.
A vast grey planet loomed through the transparasteel viewport before him. Swirls of clouds and atmosphere undulated like waves, far too fast to be made of breathable air. He looked over his shoulder to the nearest cadet and demanded an explanation.
“It’s a gas planet, my lord,” the woman said, quickly. “Our sensors detect no land mass below the clouds. The computers have determined it is impossible to sustain humanoid life.”
Of course. The planet was empty, just like all of the others; lifeless, useless, meaningless. He knew she wasn’t here. He had known all along, and he would continue to lead the Order along from planet to planet, each one more fruitless than the rest.
Rey of Jakku would not be found so easily. Rey of the Light would not yield to Kylo Ren.
Only for Ben Solo would the Jedi reveal herself. Yet, with each outburst, each wisp of life flitting through his clenched fingers, Kylo Ren was shredded further and further into nothing. He was a husk now, a burnt shell of the greatness he once was. He held up the facade, however, as heavy as it was. It was his only protection, it was the only way that he could truly protect her…
Rey of the Light.
Kylo Ren could no sooner destroy her, than he was able to destroy his own Uncle. She was calling to him, somewhere out there in the stars, like a siren. As hard as he tried, he could not refuse her, and she was luring him further and further away from all that he had ever known.
Only Rey had reached Ben Solo, and only Rey was keeping him alive now.
Ben’s hands shook and he clasped them behind his back. Her spark lingered just outside his mind, behind him somewhere in the opposite direction of where his fleet was headed. He knew nothing other than that she was alive, and that she was still trying to shut him out. Yet she glimmered a galaxy away, blinding his mind with the sting of hope, the burn of the Light.
“Send down a probe,” he said at last, watching the young cadet absorb his words, daring her to argue.
She nodded. “Yes my lord.”
He would buy Rey every second that he could. And he would find her.
***
Rey
It didn’t take long before Rey found herself missing the mornings on Ahch-To.
She had never been in a place that had resonated to deeply within her. The very ground seemed to sing in her veins, fueling her very being with life and hope. She had only been blessed with days on the water planet, but she ached for more.
The stone huts held no comfort, but the shale-top mountains had given her peace and purpose. Luke Skywalker’s face still flickered vividly inside her memory, as did his words and his lessons. Like Ahch-To, she had barely known him long enough to call him anything more than an acquaintance, but she supposed he would be the only Jedi Master she would ever know.
The Millennium Falcon shuddered under her feet and she peered curiously through the corridor to the cockpit. Aside from a frustrated whuff , Chewbacca didn’t appear to be alarmed. She settled back into the bench of the common area.
This inherited ship was as good as her home now, even if it offered little comfort. The bunks were serviceable, the facilities were old but functioning and there were plenty of rations on board. She had her friends, the droids, and Chewie.
Yet this ship was not hers, it did not belong to her. She was a guest.
The Skywalker saber was before her, littering the old-fashioned game table with all its insides. On one side, the fractured Kyber crystal flickered weakly, freed from it’s fascenings. On the other, the interior pieces were organized into neat piles. It had taken her weeks to gather the courage to disassemble it. It felt wrong to do such a thing.
When she stared at it, she felt more lost than ever; wedged between a powerful Force family, and her own unknown heritage. Who was she to rebuild this saber? If Ben Solo did not deserve it, she certainly did not.
With a sigh, she turned away and looked towards one of the nearest viewports. The flicker of hyperspace was all she could see. They’d been traveling for what felt like days, on the way back from another scouting run. Finn was asleep in a bunk down the hall. It was the first time she’d been alone in days and she had started to dread it.
Ben’s presence lingered out of reach. She feared the day when her surroundings faded to nothing and only he remained. It was hard enough to forget his face the last time they’d seen each other. He still tried to reach out to her, to find her. It took practically all of her strength to shut him out, even as his Force presence burned like an ember in the dark place in her mind reserved just for him. In that dark place, she felt their bond hum with a horrible sense of finality.
Not long ago, that realization would have pleased her, even excited her. She had nearly succeeded in turning him, felt the goodness in his soul as he watched her with those dark, sad eyes. Under the surface something deeper had formed. It happened as they had fought back to back, when she had felt his strong hands on her, at the touch of their skin.
No one could ever know how deeply she had fallen; into the darkness, into Ben Solo, outside of herself. Only Ben.
Kylo Ren.
Whatever he was now.
She knew he would find her, just as strongly as she knew that his ember would soon burn a hole through her carefully placed guards. She could not fight him forever, and a large part of her wanted nothing more than to surrender.