How many times will we meet like this?
Starkiller, Jelucan, Bothawui, Rodia, Akiva, Dantooine… Lightsaber strikes and purposefully hurtful words, scars and rage and narrow escapes.
She’s so tired.
Now Corellia. And she knows too much about him now to pretend this place isn’t important, even if he would die before saying so.
So she pretends she doesn’t know he’s haunted by his choices, and runs at him with her saber hilt in hand.
He swings wide as she draws close, her mind screaming Ben Ben Ben even as she blocks his blade with her own.
But he’s not Ben now, is he? This man she might have loved, Supreme Leader with an army that is loyal only through fear.
Kylo Ren. Not Ben.
Their sabers hit again, the hum discordant in her bones. She strikes again, locking him in close by connecting near the sparking quillions – ignores the pinpricks of heat on her arms and leverages his saber down toward his own thigh, as she’d done before when she left him beaten in the snow.
Is this what you wanted?
He growls – straining to raise his blade again – then grits out, “Enough of this,” before he deactivates his saber to break the blade lock and Force-blasts her back and away.
Her back hits the duracrete and the impact steals her breath, knocking her saber hilt out of her hand.
She struggles to breathe, scanning the perpetually grey sky of this overused planet like it has answers for her, for them.
Maybe it does.
Motion to her right – he lifts her saber from the ground to study it, his expression blank. He clips his own hilt to his belt, clearly intrigued by her design.
Bits of Luke’s saber – of Anakin’s saber, she now knows – mingled with metal from her staff. Broken shards of Kyber housed in a patchwork hilt.
She forces herself to stand, can almost feel the bruise blooming on her back where she’d landed and tries to stretch her muscles into compliance.
He turns the weapon in his hands, gloved fingers sliding along the lines she’d shaped.
Do you like it?
“That’s mine,” she says, as firmly as she can muster.
He sighs, long and slow. “You’re holding back,” he says, realization dawning on his face. “You have been for a while. You’re a better fighter than this.”
“Give me my lightsaber, Ben.”
His surprise shows for barely a second before he frowns and lifts the hilt in his open palm. “Is that why? You hold yourself in check because you think you can save me? After all this time?”
“Stop this,” she tries, but calls her saber to her hand all the same.
He starts toward her, confident and measured steps.
Aren’t you tired of fighting? Tired of this game?
She hits the activator beneath her right thumb, her voice breaking as she speaks. “Please.”
He pauses, nodding as he ignites his lightsaber.
“If you win.”
“All right. When I win.”
She thumbs the second activator, too, and runs to him again.