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Saqqar is a frozen wasteland.
The shuttle sinks down toward a thick blanket of white as he guides it carefully through a landing.
Slow and steady, kid.
The whisper of his father’s voice no longer takes him off guard. Snoke is dead. The war is over. Without the dark side to skew his vision, no battles to distract him, the memories are closer.
“I know,” he murmurs back. He’s long since given up keeping his responses to himself. Three years after the war, there is no one around to see him speaking to his ghosts.
I know you know, short stack, Han’s voice continues, undeterred. Still. Gotta let the sublights clear the snow for you, otherwise you’ll be stuck climbing out the escape hatch.
“Upsilon-class shuttles don’t have a skyward escape hatch,” he tosses back. There is no point in arguing that he outgrew childish nicknames long ago; it will only bring back Starkiller, red and terrible, Han’s palm infinitely gentle against Ren’s cheek—
Sounds like a design flaw to me.
“Mmm.”
The snow blows back in great white plumes as he coaxes the controls to a steady hover, clearing a space for the shuttle to land. The ship settles onto the exposed permafrost with a groan. Ren powers down the sublight engines, does one last check of his cold weather gear, and steps out into an icy hellscape.
Colossal towers dot the horizon, forgotten relics from some long-dead civilization. He doesn’t know who was here before the Hutts made this corner of the galaxy their own, but it’s clear they were builders. Nearly ten klicks from the nearest tower, he can see the bones of it clear as day, silhouetted against the pale winter sky.
He wonders what Skywalker would have made of them. The thought has teeth; despite his promise on the salt flats of Crait, his uncle is more a ghost than his father. Ren hasn’t seen his uncle since he vanished into the wind, Force projection dying a bare few moments before its master did. Luke’s absence gnaws, but he is used to it. He shuts away the thought with the ease of long practice, looking instead to the planet before him.
He ignores the icy wind, the ruined towers, the roil of clouds above him; he centers himself in the Force, letting light and dark wash over him in equal measure. It aches like a half-healed wound, but as with Luke, he is used to it. The pain in his chest, though—
No.
Ren clenches his jaw and focuses on his search, combing over Saqqar’s Force signature in search of his target. Small caches of broken equipment and survival supplies flare in his mind’s eye, lit up like candles in the Force. Undoubtedly useless, but he commits the locations to memory and keeps scanning. It takes three sweeps of the planet before he finds what he’s looking for: a subterranean vault, filled to the brim with stolen tech.
Most of the objects seem mundane enough to the untrained eye. Track chips, transmitter beacons, data storage banks. Ren is not untrained, but even if he were, the location gives away the game. Deep in Hutt Space, these are the tools of slavery. That alone would be enough to merit their destruction, but the items hide a deeper evil.
Disengaging himself from the Force, he turns until he’s facing north-northwest, aimed directly at the vault. It is cunningly placed, hidden in the shadow of one of the towers, closer to the horizon than to his current position. The snow is hip deep. The air is deathly still, though clouds continue to churn angrily in the sky above, ragged and gray. A storm moving in, he guesses.
This is a bad idea, his father’s ghost says. No ridiculous nickname, no attempt at advice. Ren shivers and doesn’t pretend it’s from the cold. This was always a terrible idea; the looming storm has merely made it worse. What Han refuses to understand is that it doesn’t matter. He’s done many terrible things in his life— what’s one more?
He ignores the ghost. Something in the Force twinges, tender as a bruise, an ache that crawls between his ribs and settles in his chest. He ignores that, too, and sets off through the snow.
...
Seven arduous miles later, he arrives. His fingers are stiff with cold despite the heavy gloves he wears, and his legs burn, muscles limp and overworked after wading for hours through deep snow. He pushes aside the discomfort. Even half-wrecked, the tower soars hundreds of feet above his head. Tucked away at the foot of the structure, the vault entrance is iced over, half-buried in snow. He takes a moment to probe for security measures before he reaches out with the Force, but finds nothing. A blast of power and the ice shatters, splintering like glass. The door is clear.
You couldn’t have done that earlier?
He could explain active versus passive use of the Force, but that’s not what Han is asking.
“No,” he says.
You keep this up, you’re going to get yourself killed.
“Probably.”
Han’s ghost subsides.
The door creaks open, hinges groaning. He stamps the snow from his boots and steps inside. A long tunnel slopes down toward what must be the vault. The walls are rimed with frost. It feels colder in the tunnel than it did out in the snow.
The tunnel is long. Much longer than he thought, in fact. There’s some trick to the architecture, an endless series of switchbacks and blind turns, though he could have sworn it was a straight shot to the vault. The flashlight he brought with him has long since guttered out; there is a strange, sour smell in the air, metallic, like old blood. It’s as if he’s wandered into a maze, stumbling blindly in the dark, fighting for breath as he struggles to reach the center.
Kid—
He reaches out with the Force—why didn’t he think to do that earlier?—and nearly keels over from the blast of pain that explodes through his chest, more powerful than it should be. Closer.
But he has three year’s practice in shoving the pain away. When the agony recedes and his vision is no longer tinged with red, he can sense the vault, dead ahead. He closes his eyes and lets the Force guide him forward, step by slow step in a long straight line. Did he ever turn at all?
He can’t tell.
...
The inside of the vault is thick with dust. Beyond the storage banks and slave chips, a small desk leans against the back wall, battered and innocuous. He focuses on it. His head is fuzzy and he can’t stop shivering in the blood-thick air, but this is what he came for.
The holocron hums to life as he approaches, flaring a familiar red. Long ago, Luke speculated that holocrons were crafted from kyber crystal; as it always does, the sight of a waking gem summons memory, and grief. Only kyber turns such a furious red, cracked and bleeding under the pressure of the dark side.
Uncle—
But Luke is not here. There is only Ren, and the Sith relic he’s traveled the galaxy to find. He reaches for the lightsaber on instinct, numb fingers unclipping it from his belt with the ease of long practice.
No matter what name he wears, no matter how far he travels, Ren will always be a killer.
The Force whines, high and staticky, scraping across the surface of his mind. He can’t help the flinch.
A dark pulse of laughter emanates from the holocron, low and rich and deeply amused. An unfamiliar voice rings in his head, as mocking as the laughter.
Poor, pathetic Kylo Ren. A failed Jedi and a failed Sith. An outcast among outcasts. You are not worthy of the secrets I guard.
“I’m not here for your secrets.” He ignites his saber. The quillons flare dangerously, the blade hissing and spitting like a Moraband serpent.
The laughter comes again.
Of course not. You’re here to die.
...
The last thing he sees before the pounding fury in his head overtakes him is the shattered fragments of the holocron, spread out across the floor, glittering in the dust and the creeping frost.
...
He does not dream. The gem, and then nothing. He sinks like a stone through blank, empty darkness, and stays there. He does not dream, until he does.
Rey.
She’s bent over him, hands in a white-knuckled grip on his cowl as she shakes him awake. She blazes like a bonfire in the Force, radiant and furious. He sucks in a shaky breath; his chest hurts.
It turns into a cough, his lungs heaving, hungry for air that doesn’t taste like smoke and old blood. The hoarse sound of it makes her eyes snap to his, something wild and worried in her gaze before she looks away, mouth set in a harsh line; even in his dreams, Rey has no gentleness left for him.
But the longer it lasts, the more his certainty slips away. The pain burning like a coal behind his ribs, the rough-hewn vault floor beneath him, the smell—
The details are too vivid, too real.
She’s not wearing gloves. That’s what finally convinces him; Rey, who rushes into situations she’s not prepared for, armed with nothing but sheer, bloody-minded determination. Of course she tracked him to Hutt Space, all the way to an ice planet. Of course she didn’t bother to bring gloves.
His epiphany goes unnoticed. Rey is busy cursing at him in Mando’a, the rough words a warrior uses for a comrade who brings them nothing but trouble. He knows without asking that she likes the sound of the vowels behind her teeth, the way she can fire them like blaster shots, targeted and vicious.
Even now, he knows her.
“You shit-stupid idiot,” she half-yells. “I should leave you here for the wampas!”
“No wampas on Saqqar,” he croaks out. Her grip slackens; the shaking stops. The yelling does not.
“Well, then whatever kriffing carnivore lives on this hellhole of a planet.”
Don’t push it, kid. She sounds like she means it.
“Nothing’s stopping you,” he says, letting her glare burn through him. It’s less than he deserves.
Dammit—
“You’re right,” she snaps. “There’s nothing stopping me, except I promised your mother I’d see you safely out of Hutt Space.”
“I can manage on my own.”
“If either of us believed that, I wouldn’t be here.”
That’s an unfair assessment. Ren knows exactly how battered he is, how ragged his Force signature must look. But he’s been doing this for three years now, hunting down the last hidden remnants of the Sith and turning them to dust. It’s not much in the way of atonement—nothing ever will be—but it’s the only thing he knows to do. Darkness rises, and light to meet it; that is the Will of the Force. Nothing can change that. But if he can rob the darkness of even a fraction of its strength, he’ll spend the rest of his life in the attempt.
“Rey—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
He’s failed people in many and myriad ways over the course of his life, but this, at least, is easy enough. He quiets. Silence falls between them, thick and heavy as winter snow. Rey hauls him into a sitting position against the wall, then retreats to the other side of the room. She shivers, then clenches her teeth, stilling herself with an obvious effort of will.
He can’t help the concern that drifts out from his mind, too drained from his battle with the holocron to keep himself walled off the way they both prefer. Rey—
“I’m fine,” she snaps. “Shut up and rest, and we’ll move as soon as the storm lets up.”
...
The storm rages on, loud enough now that he can hear it in the vault. Rey is still shivering. Misery seeps out from her end of the bond, bleeding into his mind no matter how diligently he tries to block it. This is why they avoid proximity; it hurts too much.
Three hours in, he can’t stand it anymore.
“We should move,” he tells her. “Get away from the holocron.”
“It’s fine,” she says, voice thick with disgust.
Fine may be the only word she’s willing to say to him, but that doesn’t make it the truth. He’s used to dark side energy, even if it wreaked havoc on him as he made his way to the vault. She may exist alongside him in the gray, but the cave on Ahch-To remains her only real experience with the dark. Even then, it was… benevolent. Sith energy isn’t nearly so gentle. If it’s bothering him, it’s bothering her.
“Rey.” Just her name; always her name.
“Kriffing hell,” she mutters underneath her breath. A wave of exhausted anger swamps him, flooding across the bond. Rey breathes in, out, deliberate and measured. When the anger recedes, she staggers to her feet and crosses the vault to help him up.
“So, Sith-slayer. Where would you have us go?”
It’s not the name he wants to hear. He swallows down the ache, doing his best to lock it away before it can hit the bond. From the way Rey tenses, he doesn’t succeed. It doesn’t matter; whatever is between them, it can wait.
“Up into the tower. It’s intact enough that we should be able to find adequate shelter.”
She grunts in agreement and heads for the stairs. He follows. They make their way with slow steps out of the vault and back through the tunnel. It is a much shorter journey going back. Rey is a beacon; he follows her and she does not lead him astray. No twists, no turns— straight out through the heart of the maze. It’s clear now that it was Sith energy preying on him as he made his way to the vault, but he can’t help the thought—
Stop denying it.
If Rey had been with him, he’d never have become lost at all.
The further they get from the vault, the more the Sith energy fades. Rey breathes easier, and some of her shivering abates. Still, the voice lingers. Long-dead, it croons to him in memory.
You’re here to die.
It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie. He admitted as much to Han at the door; his work has made him reckless.
Not your work, kid. Your guilt.
He doesn’t answer, not with Rey walking stiff-backed ahead of him. Rey has more of him than he ever meant to give. She doesn’t need his ghosts, too.
Aw, hell, kid. Isn’t it about time you stopped lyin’ to yourself?
...
They reach the end of the tunnel and keep going, working their way up into the dubious shelter of the ruined tower. It’s made of some strange silver metal, etched with faded symbols. Rey stops to study them, then catches herself and keeps going. He frowns, watching her. How long has she been limping?
He keeps his silence until they reach a section with solid walls and enough of a ceiling to keep out the worst of the storm.
“You’re hurt.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Rey—” He doesn’t mean to say her name. He never does, but it slips out, the way it always does when he has to face her, the universe narrowed to a single syllable. “You’re limping. Whatever’s wrong, please, tend to it.”
She drops her pack in a heap on the floor—a pack full of gear but no kriffing gloves—and brings her hands to her mouth, blowing on them as if she’s just now noticed the cold. For a moment he thinks she’s going to deny it, but then she heaves a sigh and gives in.
“It’s my leg,” she admits. “I misjudged a patch of ground, okay? I slipped. I ate shit all the way down a slope. Probably bruised all to hell. Nothing either of us can do about it.”
“Ah.”
“There,” she bites out. “Now you know I fell on my ass coming to get you. Happy now?”
He ignores her, gesturing instead for her to take a seat beside him. The briefest hesitation, and then she limps toward him with her mouth set in a grim line. He waits until she’s settled on the floor, and then he places a hand—still gloved, always gloved now—on her leg, and reaches for the only skill that ever drew a smile from Luke.
Light spills from his hand, glowing a soft, molten silver. It gathers in a gentle pool around his fingers then seeps through cloth and skin to soothe away the bruise blooming on Rey’s thigh. It’s deeper than he anticipated, tender all the way to the bone. An endless stretch of moments later, he withdraws. The bruise is fully healed.
Rey is looking at him with something terribly vulnerable in her eyes, more open than he’s seen her since he stretched out a hand in the ruins of the throne room. He wants desperately to look away, but he can’t. It’s Rey— he is always and forever at her mercy.
“When did you learn that?” There’s wonder in her voice, a hint of jealousy.
“It was one of the first things I learned under Skywalker’s tutelage.”
“What? Then why—” she gestures to her face, the sweep of her hand a ghostly imitation of the scar she gave him. “Why didn’t you heal yourself?”
He could explain that it’s easier to heal another than it is to heal yourself, but like Han, that isn’t what she’s asking.
“Because I didn’t deserve it.”
The truth hangs between them, ugly and irrevocable. His head still hurts, and the cold has wormed its way into his bones. He’s tired of hiding from her. Sick of keeping his silence.
Oh, kid.
For a long moment, she doesn’t speak. She simply stares at him, shocked confusion etched across her face.
“Is that what—”
The rest of the question dies unspoken. Her expression shutters, and the bond—
The bond roils and heaves, pain buffeting him for a terrible few moments before it vanishes. Rey doesn’t move, but she’s oceans away. There’s a galaxy between them, a minefield he’s never known how to navigate. All he does is blunder through the dark and the wreckage. This is why—
This is why they lapse back into silence, the dying howl of the wind the only sound to be heard. Even his ghosts are silent.
...
Eventually, the wind quiets; the storm is over.
Rey makes no move to leave. There are many things about Rey that make him ache, make him hurt, make him wish, but he’s loath to leave her. They sit in uneasy silence. Rey is still shivering.
He forces himself to move, stripping out of his outermost cowl, ragged and gray as Saqqar’s sky, and hands it over. She takes, wordless. Vulnerability gone as it if never existed.
Some fell creature howls outside the tower, but his ghosts keep their silence. Han’s absence is a wordless rebuke. He’s spent three years holding himself back, hiding away, running, running, running. From his past, from his family. From Rey. She turned away in the throne room, slammed the door on Crait. Froze him out with furious, betrayed silence at the end of the war. Surely, she wanted nothing more to do with him. Surely, even if she did, he didn’t deserve another chance.
But here she is, braving Hutt Space and ice storms and Sith tricks to make sure he’s safe. Promise to his mother notwithstanding, that has to mean something. That final question, that furious wave of pain…
Gone now, but he can still feel the echoes of it. Like staring into a mirror, it is a pain he knows all too well, made of fear and doubt and so much longing—
Even if he’s wrong, she’s here. He owes her this.
“Ask me again.” His voice rings brokenly through the quiet of the tower.
Wrapped in his cowl, she looks unbearably fragile. But Rey has always been the stronger of them. She summons up the question, and this time, this time, he’ll answer.
“Is that what made you run? After— after the war.”
“Rey—”
“Is that what this is all about, Ben? Running, hiding, throwing yourself at every Sith relic in the galaxy— because that’s what you think you deserve?” She pauses, and then her voice drops to a bare whisper. “Is that why you keep shutting me out?”
She was the last person to say his name. He hasn’t been Kylo Ren since the First Order fell, but Ben settles like an ill-fitting cloak on his shoulders. Ren is no less awkward, but it carries less history; his deeds, and nothing more. Not his mother’s last hope, not the legacy of the Jedi. Not the name he last heard with fire falling around them, tears running freely down Rey’s cheeks.
It sounds the same on her tongue now, low and sad and heavy with salt.
“It is, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t deny it, because she’s right.
The Force shudders around them, tender and gray as the bruise he healed. Even deep wounds can heal; wasn’t that Luke’s first lesson? How strange, that he’d forgotten. A hand outstretched, the bond shuddering between them— all he has to do is reach for her.
He strips off his gloves with shaking hands. Rey watches in silence, but the Force hums with a fierce, sweet tension.
Her hands are white-knuckled once more, fingers clenched around the worn cloth of his cowl. He reaches out again—just one more time—and Rey’s hand meets his. It is a miracle. It is the Force, singing through them, bond open and flooding over them both, light and dark and bitter and sweet.
Three years of longing, three years of misunderstandings and silence and chances lost; Rey afraid that Ren couldn’t forgive her for turning away, Ren afraid she could no longer see him as anything but the creature in the mask. They were fools, but oh, oh—
Rey’s hand is small and cold in his, but strong as ever. She hauls him close, brings her other hand up to his cheek. She traces his scar like it’s something precious, stroking over the mark she left, soft and sure.
He kisses her, and the world falls away.
...
Eventually, they come back to themselves. Rey is tucked against his chest, no longer shivering. She says the words into the crook of his neck, muffled but painfully serious.
“You have to be sure.” Her breath is shaky. “You can’t— disappear again. You can’t keep trying to destroy yourself.”
Rey’s presence won’t absolve him of his crimes, won’t assuage the guilt or silence the ghosts. He’ll carry those with him forever, but the war didn’t kill him; he deserves to live. Man, not martyr. It took him the length and breadth of the galaxy to realize it, trapped freezing and alone in the icy wastes of The Dead Road, but he’s alive, and Rey, well— Rey wants to keep it that way.
“I’m sure,” he says, out loud, with the Force, again and again until she’s kissing him once more, clinging, precious. The slave tech still scattered across the planet, the other holocrons hidden away in the stars, the beast still crying somewhere beyond the tower— it all can wait.
Outside, the snow keeps falling. Caught in the hunger of Rey’s embrace, held and seen and loved in spite of it, Ben Solo finally stops running.
...
Somewhere near Saqqar, something in the Force shimmers with laughter, with regret and pride and overwhelming love.
Attaboy, Ben.