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Rey knows how cruel you need to be, to get things clean.
You use whatever works: acid baths; solvents. Scrubbing. Elbow-grease.
Leave stuff crusted with organics out under the desert sun for five, six cycles, and chances are the gunk will turn friable, thin as shed skin, bleached pale as the bells of old sea-flowers on the cliffs of Ahcht-To. You can rub it away with your thumb; see the pale metal underneath, good as new.
She once got a whole flight harness that way. Curiosity value, said Unkar Plutt. One-quarter credit.
--
The Force breathes in her bones, now. She remembers how weak she was, how Snoke held her up in the air like a doll, and she lets it in.
She holds up her hand, and a First Order attack ship stops dead in the darkness of deep space, light from its viewports spilling out across its complicated angles. They capture it without a single shot fired.
“Damn,” says Finn, heartfelt. “When you go for it, Rey, you really go.”
She does. She goes all the way. She has friends, doesn’t she, to watch her back?
--
“It’s a current that runs between all living things,” she says to Finn. “You just have to reach out and feel it. But not, you know, literally.”
“I’m reaching!” says Finn. He stares at the pack of nutrimeat on the table in front of them dubiously. “I’m reaching, okay?”
“You can do it,” says Rey. She knows he can; she can feel him in the Force, now, bright as blaster-fire.
“I can?” Finn frowns; raises his hand. The nutrimeat scoots across the table towards his reaching hand. “I can!”
From her seat in a corner of the Millennium Falcon, the General – call me Leia - looks up from her seat and smiles. “Impressive,” she says. “I don’t really like to remember how long it took my brother to get me that far. You’ll make a good teacher, Rey.”
Rey grins back at her. For a moment she feels Finn and the General; feels the other Resistance members; feels the porgs nesting down in the ducts, all of them strung in the flow of the Force like golden beads. This is everything. This is all she needs.
--
That night, she dreams of the General bending down over her. She smells of Andalian sweetwoods, and her hair is plaited through with golden wire.
“Gently, now,” says the General. “Like your uncle says. Don’t push yourself.”
Rey reaches her hand out, and a hairbrush rises up off the table in front of them and hovers in the air, spinning gently. She feels the General’s pride like a soft fire at her back. Pride and delight. And something else. Something that is hard and watchful, because otherwise – otherwise it would be afraid.
Rey bites her lip. Other things rise up to join the hairbrush, like so many delicate pleasure-craft: bottles of perfume and jars of the special cream Mama uses at night; the one to brighten her skin during the day. The clever little stick with a thousand different codes in it for doing her eyes. A string of golden beads.
“Impressive,” says Mama. “But that’s enough for now. The Corellian ambassador will be here in half an hour, darling. And you should be in bed.”
Mama. Rey looks up. There’s a mirror at the back of the dressing table. There is the fleet of little pots and bottles, glinting in the long evening light. There is a fabulous bedroom, with furniture carved out of pale smooth wood, and sarnth-weave hanging over the bed in glimmering folds. Green trees move slowly outside the tall windows, yellow lanterns shining in their branches. Beautiful, she thinks. Decadent. Pathetic. Weak. There is the General, younger, smiling, in the mirror. There is a young boy with dark hair and unfortunate ears, feeling Mama like a fire at his back.
The pots hit the dressing table with a series of sharp thumps and cracks. There’s a sudden sickly-sweet smell of Anso blossoms: one of the tiny faceted bottles of perfume has broken.
“Oh, Force,” says Mama, with feeling. “That’s what we get for practicing without Luke around, isn’t it?”
Rey’s mouth sets in a stubborn line. “I don’t see why we need uncle Luke,” she says. “I just need you to tell me what to do.”
But Mama isn’t listening. Instead, she hugs Rey briefly to her side, then pats her shoulder briskly. “C9N5 will clear this up,” she says. “And we’ll think about how things could have gone better in the morning. Bed for now, darling.”
She isn’t really upset about the bottles falling, Rey can feel that much. She is almost relieved. Rey’s weakness pleases her. She is afraid of your power, says a voice in the back of her mind. She will never tell you how to use it. She’s afraid of you, and one day she will leave your side for good.
“I don’t want to go,” Rey says.
“Well, I guess you don’t have to,” says Rose, half-asleep, from the bottom bunk. “Still plenty of Porg droppings to clean out of the lower vent system if you want to stay topside. And I want to know what you think about the secondary regulator. That thing’s held together with spit and … just spit, basically.” There’s a creak as she rolls over, then nothing but the sound of her slow breathing; the steady light of her life in the Force.
Rey lies very still in her bunk and stares at the ceiling. She tries very hard not to feel the warmth of Ben lying there beside her, several star systems away.
She tries very hard not to feel the way he burns and howls in the Force, like a half-eaten sun.
--
The next time they encounter the First Order, Rey holds out one hand and claws her fingers.
Great ragged tears appear in the side of the Star Destroyer which has the Falcon in its tractor beam; even at this distance, she can see fire blooming, deep inside the ship. See a fine scurf of debris drift out, lazy and silent, into the black.
Rose stands beside her, pushing a welding mask up off her face. “Now that,” she says quietly, “was vicious. I like it.”
Rose is fingering the talisman at her neck; Rey gets the feeling she isn’t really talking to her, at all.
--
“It only takes a minute or so for the vacuum to kill them,” says Ben. He’s sitting cross-legged, a data-pad held in his lap, looking up earnestly at Rey. “You felt their lights going out, didn’t you? One after another. Blinks on an overloaded nav-regulator.”
Rey shoves her wrench back into her tool-belt. There’s not much left to do back here, anyway: Rose does good work. Neat, precise. Properly trained. “What do you know about nav-regulators?” she finds herself asking, her voice thin and sour. “Did your father teach you?”
Ben bows his head. “Yes,” he says, quietly. “He did.”
He sounds so calm; so sad. Rey’s gut twists. Sometimes it seems as if she’s the only person in the universe who can’t make Ben angry. She can say whatever she likes; stick her fingers right inside the ugliest of his self-carved wounds, and he just sits there and takes it.
“It’s because you have the right,” he says.
Rey looks away. She isn’t going to touch that one. “I felt them dying,” she says instead. “But they were still there in the Force. Like spots of black.” Like burnt-out embers, she thinks, but doesn’t say. Like what’s left after you get something clean with fire.
Ben hears her anyway, of course. He nods. “You see,” he says. “We really are the same, you and I. Both of us can hold those lights, and snuff them out, and stare into the darkness left behind.” His face darkens, and he clenches his fists. Cracks sparkle out across the surface of the data-pad. “He could never bear to look,” he says. “He was a coward. Not like you.”
“Luke’s been visiting you, I see,” says Rey, as lightly as she can. Ben’s words feel as if they’re silting up inside her, soft and dense as ash.
For a moment, she sees them walking hand in hand together across the stars, leaving nothing but blackness in their wake. It’s the most repulsive thing that she has ever seen. It’s the most beautiful, and clean.
“Rey?” Ben lets the ruined data-pad fall out of view; reaches up to her. “Are you all right?”
“Quiet, for just a moment. Okay?” Rey kneels down, and raises her own hand up to stoke his cheek, his jaw. There’s a hint of roughness there; he needs to shave. “Ben,” she says, “I am nothing like you.” She’s pleased to find her voice is steady, though her eyes are wet. “And I never will be,” she adds.
She raises both hands; crooks her fingers, the way she’d torn the spaceship open; drags them down. His skin parts under her nails like a ripe fruit, dense and wet and warm.
And then, he isn’t there at all. Rey wipes the redness off her fingers, one by one. She’s methodical about it, thorough, and the solvent on her cleaning rag can deal with engine grease, let alone blood. Soon enough, her hands are good as new.
She wipes them dry against her overalls, and reaches for her wrench. There must be something on the Falcon left to mend.
--
“So I think I seriously used the Force to trip a guy,” says Finn. “Either that or he just … tripped.”
“Try giving a nudge to their blasters,” suggests the General. “Simple, but undeniably effective.”
“What he’s not telling you,” says Poe, “is that he got a guard to open the door for us. Just like that. It was incredible, man!”
At his feet, BB8 agrees fervently. In its opinion, droids have better things to do when slicing into enemy computer systems than open doors. Human-on-human slicing is much more efficient.
Finn rubs the back of his head. “Yeah,” he says. “That was weird. That feels weird, right?”
Rey and the General exchange a look.
“I suppose so, yeah,” says Rey. “It feels weird.”
--
“Tell me where the prisoners are,” Rey says, stepping forwards.
The Stormtrooper nods obediently. “The prisoners are dead. The bodies are likely to be in recycling unit 7B.”
“Dead?” Rey swallows. She’s never even met the people she’s been sent to save – but the General was counting on her. Counting on her to bring them home. “Dead?”
“The Supreme Leader ordered them terminated five hours ago,” says the Stormtrooper. “The prisoners are dead. The bodies are likely to be in recycling unit –”
“Sleep.”
The Stormtrooper crumples to the floor. Rey opens the bond.
“Rey?” Ben looks up from a datapad of weapons schematics; for just a moment, his face is loose and sweet with hope.
“You’re going to lose this war,” says Rey. “Kylo Ren.”
--
“Where did you learn how to do this, Rey?” The General’s voice is soft, but Rey can feel the fear at the back of it, thick as ash.
“Sometimes the pleasure-workers at Niima Outpost taught me stuff,” says Rey. “I didn’t want to change the way I did my own hair, but it was nice to learn, just the same. They always looked so pretty.”
The General smiles. If she knows Rey is lying, she shows no sign of it. Instead, she catches Rey’s eye in the battered mirror propped before her, and reaches up to smooth her hand over the thick coils of hair that Rey has twisted up around her head. “You know,” she says, “you’re a beautiful girl yourself, Rey. Not to mention, apparently a natural at haircare.” Rey snorts, and the General grins back. “Don’t knock it,” she says. “Anything can be a weapon, you know. From a certain point of view.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” says Rey hastily. “You have beautiful hair, General.” She finishes the final plait, and tucks the end under the way she remembers. The way Ben remembers.
“I’ve told you before,” says the General. “Call me Leia.”
“Sorry.” Reys nods, the way she always does. But she can’t quite bring herself to call the General by her name. Not yet. Somehow, it feels wrong.
“Thank you.” The General turns and looks up at Rey. “Would you like me to do your hair, now?”
Rey shakes her head. “I’m okay,” she says. “Thank you.”
But the General is looking in the mirror again, smiling slightly. “It’s perfect,” she says, softly. “Just the way I like it.”
If it wasn’t for the Force, Rey would never know she was afraid.
--
“Stop pretending,” Ben tells her. “You’re making yourself small.”
His ship is getting into position to begin orbital bombardment of one of the First Order’s own bases: somehow, information about the Resistance’s infiltration mission has leaked.
He’s kept the marks she left on his face, she sees. The new ones overlay the scar, vivid against his pale skin. Obvious. Rey feels a surge of sickly-sweet possessiveness. She knows this feeling: every scavenger does. A treasure. Mine.
He catches the edge of her thought, or perhaps just see where she’s looking. And he smiles. “That’s right,” he tells her. He sounds almost satisfied. “You see it now, don’t you?”
Rey shakes her head. “You’re going to kill a lot of your own people,” she tells him. She slides the data chip she came for into the pocket of her flight jacket, and casts her awareness out over the base. Every Stormtrooper she passed on her way in lies unconscious, tipped into sleep by a tug on the Force. She could probably make it to the hangar and fly her way out of here before Ben manages to get his missiles calibrated. But Finn and Rose are still in the heart of the base, setting charges in the weapons development area.
“Oh, and you care about that?” Ben asks. "About dead Stormtroopers?"
“Not really,” says Rey. But it’s a stupid waste, she doesn’t say.
Ben hears her anyway. “You see,” he says. “You don’t really care about those people. The personnel on Ingrane Base; the team you sent down there to die. The shadows you call friends.”
“Shadows like your Mama?” Rey pelts down a corridor; skids to a halt beside a viewport. Beyond the plasteel, thin violet light glints off the flat planes of the base’s auxiliary buildings. It’s moonrise on Garvel IX; one tall huge crescent is coming up over the horizon like a single silly tooth.
“Don’t,” he says roughly. “Don’t.” He turns away. “Initiate launch sequence,” Rey hears him say.
She takes a deep breath; sucks recycled air in through her teeth. She can do this. So far, the Force has never let her down.
Ben turns back, frowning. “Why all the running around?” he asks, calmer now. “Trying to call back your team? You’re too late – but, then, you know that, don’t you.” It isn’t a question.
Rey gives him the same smile she used to give to Unkar Plutt behind his back. “Ben,” she says, “I’m trying to concentrate, okay?”
He pauses; stares. His eyes widen. “You’re down there? You can’t be down there!” He spins round. “Abort! Cancel launch. Abort!”
There’s a pause, while people beyond the scope of the bond presumably try to explain to Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, that they cannot call back missiles launched from orbit.
He isn’t happy about it.
Rey interrupts. “You knew anyway,” she says. “You just didn’t want to admit it. You chose this, after all.”
His face contorts. Rey feels his presence in the Force bulge and flicker; desperate horror and longing pouring through the bond. “Get out of there,” he whispers. “Rey. There’s still time.”
Rey watches the missiles cutting long white trails through the dim air. She used to watch meteors falling, lying at night on the freezing desert sands, trying to make each and every one of them into a ship steered by her parents, coming home. Two or three times a year, they’d fall like a shower of sparks, zipping across the sky and blinking out, quick as a sand-snapper closing its jaws. Back then, she was fooling herself. She knows that now. And she knows that she’ll never, never be the same as Ben. She’ll keep all the sparks she can burning, whatever it takes.
She steps towards Ben; lays one hand on his chest. His need for her is so naked and vast, it’s like touching something skinned.
She can hear them coming, now, tonnes of white-hot plasteel screaming down through atmo, enough power packed into their snub bodies to scoop the sprawling base out of the earth like a bruise from a fruit. To turn half the continent they’re standing on into a plain of ash.
Rey lifts her hand. She clicks her fingers.
In the sky above the base, the missiles shudder to a stop.
“Rey,” Ben says. “Rey.” It sounds like a benediction.
Then he draws himself up; takes a breath. “Impressive,” he says, his voice level.
But Rey can hear what he’s feeling, up there in orbit. She’s burning him up from inside out, and he won’t ever let her go, not anymore. He wants to eat her right down to the bone.
He wants to follow her word.
--
Rey waits until their shuttle is in the air before shunting the missiles aside, sending them arcing out through the dim air in low parabolas, like stones tossed underarm across the desert, skipping to stillness in a glassy plume of sand. Some of their payloads still ignite, with a thump she feels through her bones and a plume of fire out on the horizon, blotting out the moon, but they chew up a plain full of waving orl-grass instead of Ingrane Base.
She is nothing like Ben. But she’s still going to win this war.
One by one, she makes a little shift in the mind of every sentient creature in the base below. Easy as making a mark on a wall; easy as snapping her fingers.
Finn stares at her, light from the burning grass gilding the side of his face, casting his eyes into shadow. “You did something just then, didn’t you?” he says.
“No shit, she did something!” Rose revs up the engines; sets a course for their rendezvous point. “That was amazing. Really, properly amazing. Are you sure you don’t need to sit down, though? Maybe … pass out for a day or so?”
“No, I’m good.” She is. She’s fine. She's always fine.
She looks sideways at Finn.
He’s frowning, craning out through the shuttle window to the faint glow on the horizon which is all that marks the location of Ingrane Base.
“Why,” he asks, “aren’t they coming after us?”
--
“Ingrane Base surrendered,” the General tells her. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Rey shrugs. “I gave them the idea,” she says. “Is that a problem?”
“Not as such, no.” The General – Leia – steeples her fingers. “I was wondering,” she says, “if you’ve been looking at those Jedi texts of yours. You have such power, Rey. I don’t want you regretting how you use it.”
“I don’t. You’d prefer I’d let the missiles hit the base?”
The General looks pained. “That isn’t what I said.”
“I’ve been reading the books,” Finn says hastily. “If I never see the word ‘balance’ again, it’ll be too soon.”
Rey snorts. “Yeah, because trying for balance worked out so well, in the first place.” She thinks of the ships’ graveyard on Jakku; the empty huts on Achto-To. The dried-up, empty flowers on the cliffs, and old flesh clinging on inside a flight-suit, in the sand. The place under the island, and the answer it had given her. She shrugs. “Keep the books, if you want,” she says. “I think I’ve learnt everything I’m going to from them by now, anyway.”
She has. It was easy enough for her to take what she wanted. Nowadays, it always is.
Finn raises an eyebrow. But he nods, just the same.
“Casualties are unavoidable in war. You need to make your peace with that, Rey.” The General’s voice is soft. “You won’t be able to avoid them forever.”
Rey shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” she says. “It’s not really the killing people that bothers me.”
“So what does?” Finn is staring at her, like he’s trying to work something out.
“Being alone.” She doesn’t add the second half of the thought – or being like him – but it doesn’t matter.
Finn melts. “Oh, man. Rey. We’re right here.” His arms are tight around her, and the General’s hand is warm against her back. She’s leaning right over them, as if to keep them safe. This close, her hair smells of Anso blossoms.
--
There’s an attempted coup on the First Order command ship. Rey is flying a recon mission, in one of the stealth ships requisitioned from Ingrane Base, when Ben’s pain and indignation flares through her head, cruel and close. She can smell his sweat. The burnt flesh from a blaster shot that winged his arm.
She curses; sends her ship dipping down so low that sprays of liquid mercury from the lake beneath fly up on either side in silver sheets.
“Sorry.” Ben’s voice is tight. “This will be over momentarily.”
“Being Supreme Leader not all its cracked up to be?” Rey levels the ship out; engages the autopilot. “You’re the one who’s trying to be something they’re not, Ben. Come back. Come to me.”
Ben sends his lightsabre hissing up under somebody’s ribcage. “You think it’s that easy, do you?”
“I think it’s not impossible.” Rey scrunches up in her seat, blinks the dazzle out of her eyes. On the horizon, tall purple fronds grow up out of the silver lake like plumes of smoke. “Please,” she says, “you don’t have to do this. Just tell them to stop shooting.”
“I’m touched.” There’s no irony in Ben’s voice. “You want me to win?”
“I want you to live.”
“Yes, well.” He pivots, clenches a fist. She feels a corridor crumple up behind him, Stormtroopers and all, like so much silk. “We don’t all have your facility with the Mind Trick.”
“It was the first thing I ever learned,” says Rey. “You taught me, remember?”
“I remember.” Ben’s leaning, panting, against what must be a viewport. She can feel it, cold and smooth and solid, against his back. She feels the things he does more and more sharply, these days. The scratch of his sheets at night; the tasteless food that he insists on choking down.
But right now all she can see is his face, splashed with fresh blood. He’s about to do something big; she can feel the pull in the Force, like a gravity well. Something huge and hungry, waiting to devour. “I’m sorry, Rey,” he says again. “The way I am now, I only know one way of doing things.”
And he clenches his fist again, his teeth bared. He’s crushing half his ship, it seems, or even more. Rey hears, secondhand, the groan and screech of metal tearing, just an airlock away. She feels the lights go out.
“Impressive,” she says. It is.
Ben’s head is lowered; his hair plastered to his face with sweat. “This is what I am,” he says. “This is the only choice I know how to make.”
Rey reaches forwards; lifts his chin. “I know,” she says. “Ben, I understand.” She leans towards him, feeling his breath on her face, seeing his eyes go wide. Treasure. Mine. She’s thinking it, and so, she knows, is he. I'm not alone.
The kiss is sweet and warm, like coming home. His lips curve under hers, in a small smile.
She leans back, opening her eyes on silver; hearing only the engine purring down beneath her feet. Rey raises one hand; touches her face. Her fingers come away red and wet: Ben’s sweat, and someone else’s blood.
She licks her lips. For a moment, she seems to see a figure out of the corner of her eye: Luke, standing on the silver underneath her, looking up. But she’s been keeping him out for weeks now: she doesn’t need to listen to one more person who left her side.
The Force helps her, even, just as it helps her reach across to Ben. It’s easy enough to close her eyes, and open them again, on sheets of liquid metal, empty, shining, clean.
--
“Surrender,” says Rey. “Your loyalty now lies with the Resistance. Now and forever.” She scratches the back of her neck, feeling a little awkward. “Or at least until we’ve won this war,” she adds. “Don’t worry. We’ll treat you well.”
Before her, serried ranks of Stormtroopers sink to their knees, and bow their heads. She feels their minds turning over, like keys in so many locks. Like fingers snapping, click click click. Like little lights, coming back on against the reaching dark.
“There.” Rey turns around, letting her grip on the Force relax a little. Behind her, she hears the Stormtroopers rising to their feet; brushing themselves off. With Ben’s dreadnaught crippled and his newest attack force in her hands, the odds are evening out. The Resistance isn’t just a handful of people in the Falcon any more.
“Rey.” Finn’s voice is strange. Raw.
“What is it?”
“Is this really – is this really how it’s going to be?”
“The Mind Trick isn’t Dark Side,” Rey tells him. “You know that. You can do it yourself.”
“No.” Finn shakes his head. “I won’t, Rey. Not ever again.” His voice cracks; he scrubs at his face. “This isn’t how it should go, Rey. Can’t you see?”
“Would you rather they were dead?”
“This isn’t you, Rey.” Finn sounds as if someone really has died, just in front of him. “It’s some freaky Force shit, making you do this.”
Rey shakes her head. “No,” she tells him. “This is me, Finn. This is the best way I can see.” She tries for a grin, although it feels stiff and artificial on her face. “You can’t say I didn’t try other methods,” she says. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to do it, if you want.”
“Do what? Recondition them? What Luke’s been saying – he’s right about you, you know.” Finn looks as if he might be sick, but instead he turns on his heel and marches off down the corridor. Going to Poe, Rey supposes. Or Rose. Or poor dead Luke. Who would have thought he’d go to Finn, of all people, after she shut him out?
And why can’t Finn understand that sometimes you do what you have to do, because every other option you have is worse? Because otherwise, you’ll end up just like Ben, your hands all red with blood? Because you’re the only one in all the universe who can?
Rey stares after Finn, clenching her fists. She feels thin and empty, dried out, hardly enough to make a shadow under the desert sun.
She feels like she did in front of Snoke.
--
“And then he left,” Rey tells the General. “He hasn’t really spoken to me since.”
The General bows her head; considers the blank screen of the datapad in her lap. “Finn’s history isn’t such that he can easily accept mental coercion, even as a means to a desirable end,” she says at length.
“I know that. But what choice did I have?”
“I think you already know that, Rey.” The General raises her head; looks her in the eye. “I hope,” she says, “that at the very least, this change you’ve made will stick.”
Rey nods. She’s sure of that much, at least. “It will,” she says. “I can feel it.” She can: the Force is stretching out before her like a field of light, the minds she’s turned like pale small flowers, nodding in the breeze.
“That’s something.” The General lets out a breath. “But I am still the commander of our forces, Rey. And I am ordering you, from now on, to find another way.” She takes Rey’s hands in hers, her face tight with concern. With fear. “Order them to listen, if you must,” she says. “Tell them to lay down their arms. But don’t order them to obey you, Rey. Don’t take that choice away.”
Rey pulls her hands back. “I told them to be loyal to the Rebellion,” she says. “Not to me.”
“I know. But – ”
“Some people,” says Rey, “just can’t be trusted to make their own choices. You know that, Mama.” She shakes her head; reaches a hand to stroke her hair. "Or if you don't, I can help you. Help you see the light. Think about it, okay?"
She gets to her feet, feeling surprisingly calm, considering. Mama doesn’t understand, but coming to her hasn’t been a waste. Rey’s come to a decision, although she can’t yet quite put it into words.
“Thank you,” she says. “Things are much clearer now.”
Mama doesn’t answer. For some reason, her face has gone completely white.
--
“You know what you need to do, Rey,” Ben says. He’s sitting beside her on her bunk, their hands just touching. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it on my own.”
“I know.” Rey shifts her hand a little; interlaces their fingers. “I’m sorry that Mama won’t be here when you come back,” she says. “Not to start with, anyway.” They’d taken the Falcon in the night, Finn and Mama, Poe and Rose, their fear trailing behind them like footsteps across the dunes. They’d left messages on her comm, but she’d deleted them all. They’ll be in touch soon enough; with the First Order gone, they’ll have no reason to hide. And with her forces and Ben’s combined, they won’t be able to, either. Not for long.
She shakes her head, smiling a little. “Finn stole my books, you know,” she says, easy and rueful. “It’s sort of a tradition now, I suppose.”
“FN-2187 has the Jedi texts?” Ben laughs, sounding almost carefree. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
“No,” Rey agrees, “probably not.” She lets herself lean against Ben’s side for a moment, pretends he’s really there, right next to her. Soon he will be, after all. “You’ll like him, you know,” she says. “He’s just going to take some persuading. Like Mama.”
Ben stiffens beside her, wincing as if he’s still that scared small boy, watching his own face in the mirror. “Do it now, Rey,” he says. “Do it before I hurt anyone else. Please.”
Rey twists round, looks up into his face. There’s only the old scar there now, healed pale and thin. She takes a deep breath.
“Surrender,” she says. Around her, she feels the Force swirl, a field of white around a gulf of black. Like something huge and hungry, waiting to devour. “Your loyalty now lies with the Resistance. With the Light, now and forever. Or, to be more precise about it,” she adds, “it lies with me.”
It takes a while. Ben helps her as much as he can, but the Force eddies around his mind in thick ripples, hard to work through. She feels as if she’s filling up a deep, dark hole with sand, grain by shining grain.
Part-way through, Ben shakes his head and says something about choice, and will.
Rey strokes his cheek. “Remember Ingrane Base?” she says. “Remember how you almost got me killed?”
It’s almost easy, after that.
Rey’s ship judders around her as she narrows her will, as she reshapes the future in one image, sharp and pure. She spares a thought for her Stormtroopers in their quarters; hopes they won’t be too alarmed. She’s doing this for them as well, after all.
In the end, though, Ben looks down at her. His eyes are clear. He smiles. “You did it,” he says. “Rey. My Rey. I’m yours.”
“You are.” Rey doesn’t say that he won’t ever have to bloody his hands again: she knows perfectly well that isn’t true. “You’ll do things my way, now,” she says, instead. “I’ll tell you how.”
“I’ll do whatever you say.” Ben looks younger, now. Fresh. Good as new.
“Ben.” Rey strokes his face, trails her hand downwards, a promise of more. For a moment she finds herself missing the fight in him, the way his flesh came undone for her. But there are other ways to make that happen. Healthier ways.
“You and I,” she says, “we’re just the same.”
“We are.” Ben lifts her hand to his lips; kisses her palm. A promise. “Send me your co-ordinates,” he says. “My fleet will be with you as soon as we can ready the ships for the jump to lightspeed.”
“And so will you.” Rey grins, feeling almost giddy. The Force curls around them both, soft and open, a plain of purest white, without a speck.
“And so will I.” Ben presses another kiss to her palm, and is gone.
Alone in her cabin, Rey taps in the code that will send her position through to the First Order. To Ben.
She holds up her hands, feeling the Force pour through her fingers like untainted light. Like fine hot sand. She checks her fingers carefully, each one, right down to the uneven curves of her bitten-down nails. But it’s all right now, it really is.
Her hands are quite, quite clean.