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Kylo had just finished a meeting with his highest-ranking officials on what to do about the rebel fleet attacking, and successfully overtaking, the Order’s smaller outposts. While he’d been lenient about them before, they were becoming more and more of a nuisance as of late and with General Hux’s “untimely” death, he was searching for a new General that would actually listen to him about wanting prisoners taken alive without resorting to unnecessary violence. He was headed towards his personal library when a silence fell over the hall. Quickly pushing his way into the room and shutting the door, a mere glance towards the window showed Rey sparring against a tall stack of rocks.
“Your stance is off. Again.” he drawled out, removing his helmet and gloves, placing them on his desk. He walked over and pushed her shoulder, making her trip over herself as she went in for a parry. “See?” he said as she caught herself with a gasp of “kriff” under her breath. “I shouldn’t have been able to do that. If you’re only fighting one opponent, you need to keep your feet firmly planted in your chosen stance for the moment or you’ll lose when he swipes your legs out from under you.”
Rey growled and swung her staff at his chest, making him jump out of the way. “Leave me alone! I don’t need you correcting me! You’re my enemy, not my teacher!” she screamed out. He hoped no one was around to hear her.
“Okay Jedi, let me rephrase. The next time you go with your little team of degenerates to an outer rim planet to take over one of my stormtrooper outposts that I put there for the sole purpose of abolishing slavery, I will be the one following you and I will take your legs out from underneath you! Do you understand?!” he raged back at her.
Rey looked hurt for just a moment, then smothered it in a mask of anger. “I’m not with them anymore. They found out about the bond. I told Rose who told Finn who told Poe who told everyone else and after I explained everything to Leia, they banished me because I was a liability they couldn’t afford. Chewie dropped me off a month ago. I haven’t seen anyone sense.”
Kylo was immediately livid. How dare they throw her out! After everything she’d sacrificed for them! “Where are you?”
“None of your business! Chewie and your mother know where I am and that I’m safe. That’s all you need to know!”
She went back to training as if the bond had cut and ignored him. Kylo sighed through his nose. “You need to be here with me! You need to see what we could become, what we could do! Together, you and I can rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be. I have changed the Order for the better!”
“It doesn’t matter, Ben!”
“Don’t call me that, that is not my name!”
“Yes, it is!” she swung her staff at his head, making him duck.
“No, it’s not!” he screamed as he grabbed her staff and swung blindly. Before the staff could connect with her body, the bond ended.
Panting hard, he growls low in his throat and rakes his hands through his hair then down his face. “Why did I do that?!” he says to nothing, taking the lamp off the desk and flinging it across the room, feeling a little bit better when he hears the glass shatter.
A flicker of blue in his peripheral vision had him snapping his head to the side then all the air he thought he had in his lungs all but evaporated. “Hello, grandson.”
Ben could have fainted. He wouldn’t have recognized her had he not watched the holos of her funeral during his research, but there she stood. Smiling softly in all her regal glory, her hair was down and curled around her shoulders, wearing a dress that hung loosely on her frame but showcased her stomach that was still a little rounded from pregnancy. She looked so much like what he saw when he selfishly dreamed of Rey being pregnant with their children that he had to resist the urge to pull the ghost forward and hug her tight. Instead, he stood up and gulped nervously. “Grandmother. W... what are you doing here?” he stuttered out.
Her smile faded and she looked to the broken lamp on the floor, “I think you know”. She sighed then collected herself and looked him over. “Maker, I haven’t seen you since you were a baby. How you’ve grown.”
That made him pause. “You’ve...visited before?”
Padme gave him a small smile. “Of course! We both visited that day! She is our daughter, it’s only right we were there to meet our grandchild.”
Ben gaped at her. “Both? You mean…Lord Vader was there? On the day of my birth? Then why didn’t he….” he stopped and looked at Padme who’s smile had quickly been replaced with pursed lips and a hard glare.
She took a deep breath and stared into Ben’s eyes, a righteous fury suddenly flashing through her own. “You dare say that name in my presence! He’s not that...that thing they made him to be! Just as you are not the person that he made you to be! It tore me apart to watch him become that monster and I will not watch you do the same any longer! Your grandfather’s name is Anakin Skywalker, your name is Ben Solo, and I love you both too much to watch history repeat itself. I swear to every star in the galaxy, I will not let you kill her the way he killed me!”
Those words shut down anything he might’ve said. He suddenly felt two inches tall and with his face burning from shame, he realized with a start that he’d spent a decade praying to the wrong man. To someone that no longer existed and never would again. Before he could do anything to stop it, he was bombarded with images of what was said and what Padme saw as Anakin snuffed out what was left of his light that day on Mustafar. The parallels of what happened to her and what he himself had said and nearly done to Rey mere minutes before were not lost on him. As the onslaught ended and he watched Padme tell Obi-Wan that there was still good in Anakin, the desperation in her voice for him to believe her sounding just like Rey had the night he killed Snoke. He choked and looked away. Blinking a few times to clear his tears, he took a moment and chose his next words very carefully. “I am sorry, Grandmother. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I’m so sorry.”
Padme sized him up and nodded stiffly, accepting his apology. “I don’t care how you do it, but you must make it right, Ben. You must!”
Ben tried to ignore the tears that once again blurred his vision, this was overwhelming. “Where do I start, Grandmother? I’ve done so much damage. I can change the Order little by little but mother, uncle Chewie…. Rey…they’ll never understand.”
Padme gives him a stern look. “You can start by being honest with yourself.”
Ben flinches and hangs his head in shame. “They’ll never understand” he whispers.
Padme smiles again and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Try”
When he looks up, she’s gone.
The bond doesn’t open between he and Rey for over a month. In that time, Ben does all he can to reconcile with what was left of his family. He even goes to meet Leia in a secluded neutral territory, only to find she’d arrived via the Falcon with Chewie. Leia had stayed inside while Chewbacca punched him, tossed him across the room, roared in his face till his throat was hoarse and then finally cried, hugging him so tight Ben was sure he’d have multiple inflamed disks in his spine when it was done.
It was during the hug that Leia descended down the ramp with a teary smile. Chewbacca put him down and Ben turned to his mother, only to have her smack him across the mouth as hard as she could. “That’s for your father!” she smacked him again on the other cheek “That’s for Chewie!” and again, “That’s for Rey!” then she hugged him and let finally herself break down in her son’s arms.
They stayed on that planet for three days while Ben talks and talks and talks until his throat is sore, anything to help them understand. He helps them through the devastation of his news and when they part ways, lighter than they’ve felt in years, Leia kisses her son’s cheek then whispers, “I love you, Ben, I love you son.” into his chest as they hug goodbye. He’d never felt more deserving of his given name in his entire life.
It’s two weeks after that goodbye that the bond returns, and when it does, he’s incredibly relieved that he’s locked himself in his quarters for the night. He gets no warning as Rey immediately lunges for him, but instead of resisting, he lets her beat on him till he’s on his knees before her. “Why won’t you fight back?!” she screams in his face, smacking his reading glasses off his face and cracking the bridge of his nose.
He shakes his head and smiles, blood gushing down his face, making him look downright terrifying if it were any other situation. “You’re beautiful. I don’t think I ever told you that. A dreadful mistake on my part.”
Rey is taken aback for a moment before scoffing and kicking him in the chest, causing him to flail backwards and hit the floor hard. The minute he’s down, Rey plants a booted foot smack dab in the middle of his chest, staff poised to strike him in the face. He simply raises his hands in surrender, beaming at her though the look she’s giving him is ferocious. “Fight back!” she screams again. He shakes his head and looks at her with a sort of reverence that makes her pause and lower her staff. “What is wrong with you, Kylo Ren?! FIGHT ME!” She lifts her foot off his chest then brings it down, cracking at least two of his ribs.
When she lifts her foot again, he shakily sits up and leans on one hand while holding out the other. “I don’t believe we’ve properly met. Ben Solo, and you are?”
Rey suspiciously takes his hand and feels for his signature in the Force. She’s more than a little shocked to find that while his darkness is still there, much more so than the light, it’s no longer drowning him. He’s found his own sense of balance.
Ben watches as she tosses her staff off to the side, looking shocked and …dare he say, repentant? She lets go of his hand then sits on the floor beside him and unfurls one of her arm bands, tearing it at the elbow and mopping the blood from his face. He contemplates apologizing for what he said on the Supremacy and during their last encounter, but the silence between them is oddly comfortable. As she wipes at his mouth, he looks into her eyes and watches a cute blush appear high on her cheeks before she says, “Rey…my name is Rey.”