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They fight.
In the desert, the sand hot underfoot, both sweating in the arid air.
The year has changed her. She has stopped broadcasting her every thought and emotion. She has corrected the tell in her left foot before she swings. She is surer, her aim is truer.
He bests her. She flees.
He follows.
On his ship. She looks surprised to see him – surprised, even though it is her who has come to him. Again.
She strikes before he can even speak. He doesn’t try to win, this time. He wants to know where this is going, why she comes back over and over when she was the one to turn him down, he wants to know what she’s searching for – on his ship, with him.
“Do you still think you can make me turn, Scavenger?” he taunts.
She doesn’t respond, just comes at him harder, and when their sabers crash through his grandfather’s mask, in the moment before she disarms him, he thinks –
Have you given up on me yet?
She takes what she came for. She leaves.
Again.
The bond opens.
She is unarmed. His saber rattles on his nightstand but he ignores it.
She is pacing in a small space. He can’t see her surroundings, but he can tell by her movements that she feels confined.
She looks cold.
“I thought this thing was supposed to be over.”
This thing?
“If Snoke created the bond, why is this still happening?”
Kylo shrugs. “Snoke lied.”
She meets his eyes briefly, annoyed. “Did you know?”
“Know what?”
He’s frustrating her now, but he can’t help it. He’s distracted by her. He hasn’t seen her since the fight. Her hair is longer. She looks thinner. Are they feeding her?
“That he was lying. Did you know the bond still existed?”
He shrugs again. “You’ve always been able to control it,” he responds. “I waited.”
She whirls on him then. “What do you mean control it? I have no control over this, over anything. Do you think if I could control it, I would want to see you?”
He doesn’t respond to that.
“It feels like you,” he says softly, after a beat. “The bond. It has your force signature.”
She frowns.
“Can you feel force signatures?” he asks. He never expected to have this conversation.
After a moment of eyeing him warily, she nods. “Yes. I could feel Luke. And Leia. And you.”
“As I feel you.” She blinks at that, a look passing across her face that he can’t read. “What do I feel like?” he asks.
She looks down at the ground, one hand moving to the back of her neck.
“It’s… hard to describe.”
“You could show me.”
“No!” He smirks. Too easy. “I never want you in my head again. It’s… you feel strong. Dark. Angry.”
He nods. He suspected as much. His mother must have felt that too, before she sent him to Luke. Maybe that was why no one…
“Warm.”
Now it is his turn to blink in surprise. “Warm?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, embarrassed. “It’s your signature.”
He fights the urge to smile, and then remembers why they are even discussing this.
“Does the bond feel like that?” he asks. “Strong, dark, angry?” He leaves out “warm.”
She shakes her head.
“What is it like?” he prods.
“It’s bright. Blinding, almost. Fragile but true. And…”
“Beautiful,” he finishes. She nods, grateful for his understanding, until she realizes…
“But you said it feels like…”
He lets it hang in the air between them. Surely it cannot be a surprise to her? He offered her the galaxy.
She has stepped toward him, just a little, and her mouth is open, ready to speak when –
“Rey? Are you in there?” The traitor’s voice at the door. “It’s time to go!”
He growls, out of anger or jealousy or frustration he doesn’t know, but before he can say anything else –
She severs the connection and she’s gone.
He finds her on the Death Star, in the midst of a storm, the sea roiling around them.
“Don’t do this,” he shouts over the waves before her saber crashes against his. She launches herself at him, faster and stronger than he’s ever seen her. “It’s not safe!”
The irony is not lost on him, his expressing concern for her safety as they battle on the ruins of a half-sunken ship.
“I won’t let you stop me!” she shouts.
“This is nothing there for you,” he yells.
She fights hard, and dirtier this time. She fights to win and for the first time since Starkiller base, he worries she might truly kill him.
He parries, uses every skill the Jedi and Sith texts ever taught him, and eventually they end up deadlocked, sabers crossed as they fight for dominance.
“People think they know me. They think they know what I am capable of, what my limits are.” She says. “No one does.”
His affection for her swells.
“But I do,” he tells her, their blades kissing one last time before he disarms her, sending her saber rattling across the hull, perilously close to the seas below.
In the moment before she turns to retrieve it, he holds her eyes.
“Don’t follow me,” he says.
Bright. True. Beautiful.
He leaves her.
The ship feels alive. Ben knows he needs to be careful now.
In the beginning, he thought it was his role in the Emperor’s legacy that drew him here. As Darth Vader’s grandson, he was the natural apprentice and heir to the Emperor. In dreams, Palpatine came to him, promising him power, certainty, revenge, everything he had ever wanted.
Promising him Rey.
But power meant nothing to him anymore, and the Rey in his visions was dark and hollow, cruel where Rey was gentle, cold where Rey was warm.
Without Snoke in his mind, he had found himself foundering, uncertain. Things that had seemed simple before, black and white, grew complicated. The First Order’s methods seemed wasteful. What had seemed necessary before, now reeked of aimless cruelty.
And then –
When his mother died, the world turned and so did he. He felt her go, felt her in the force. He realized that he would never see her again, and the pain tore through him with more ferocity that anything Snoke had ever done to him.
He could have fallen deeper, then, been lost forever.
But he didn’t.
When his grief settled, what remained was simple resolve: he would not let anything happen to Rey. Both for his mother and for himself, he would not let any harm come to her before he could see her again, at the end of all of this.
And so when he realized where she was headed, that she was going to face Palpatine, he knew he could hide no longer.
He is not part of Palpatine’s legacy. Palpatine is his.
She finds him, her saber recovered and lit.
They face each other. He does not move. He will not fight her unless he has to, unless it is the only way to keep her safe.
She has other ideas.
She lunges at him again, her blade narrowly missing his chest and his heart leaps at the near miss. Her thrust unbalances her, and he uses the opportunity to grab her sword arm, to take her weapon and throw it behind him, so it is just them, face to face.
“Don’t do this Rey,” he warns through gritted teeth as she fights him.
“I won’t let you!” She screams, feral, and the urge to kiss her is so strong that he wonders how anyone ever described him as undisciplined. “This is my destiny.”
She is strong and they are running out of time, whatever waits beneath them stirring to life. He wonders if she can feel it.
“Listen to me,” he growls. “This isn’t about the Resistance and the First Order. This isn’t about you and me. This is a bigger fight and it is mine.”
She struggles again, kicking at his legs, and he grabs her closer, pulls her fully against him to control her, her faces inches from his. Looking into her eyes, as close as they were in the elevator on the Supremacy, he feels his soul cleave.
“Kylo Ren,” she spits, but there is something in her eyes, something that tells him she feels it too.
“No,” he responds, and releases her.
She stumbles back stunned.
“What do you mean, “no”?” she demands.
“That’s not my name,” he says simply.
She opens her mouth, gapes. It would be endearing under any other circumstances.
He wishes he had time to enjoy it.
“Rey, I’m going to kill him. And I’m going alone. Go back to your friends. Protect them and let them protect you.”
She is still staring at him, her brows knit together in confusion.
He closes his eyes briefly, holding the image of her close in his mind one last time.
Another man would kiss her. Another man would declare his love.
But all Ben Solo can offer her now is his life.
He stuns her briefly with the force, apologizing silently as he does. Before he leaves, he floats her saber back to her, and activates the tracking beacon on her wrist.
Then, he runs.
She finds him, again, at the last.
Seeing her shatters him.
All he wanted – all that was left to him – was to keep her safe. To keep her from this.
He isn’t strong enough. Palpatine can see his soul, can see everything. He is stronger than Ben could ever be, stronger than Snoke, than anything Ben can imagine.
And now she is here.
The Emperor laughs – this has been his plan all along.
“Your coming together is your undoing,” he cackles, releasing Ben from his hold, his body slumping to the ground.
Rey is next to him in in an instant.
“I told you to go,” he chokes out.
“You told me to protect my friends,” she responds, offering her hand as force lightening illuminates her face.
It isn’t a declaration of love. It isn’t a kiss.
But it changes everything.
In the end, she is the one to deal the final blow. She is stronger, brighter, truer, and when the Emperor finally dies, for a moment Ben thinks she might be the only thing left in the universe.
Then the world goes dark.
He wakes on a familiar ship, on a familiar bed. His saber is nowhere to be found and he is restrained.
He can’t see her.
He screams for her, tearing at his restraints, tearing the manacles from the wall. Almost instantly, Chewie, the traitor and the pilot appear, blasters raised, shouting at him to stop, that they’ll shoot.
“Where is she?” he demands, the room shaking around him.
Poe cocks his weapon, but it is Chewie who stills his hand.
“Where is she?” he shouts again, panicking. If she is hurt, if she is…
Chewie takes pity on him, convinces the others not to shoot, to answer.
“She is in the other room. When we found you, you were both unconscious. We tried to leave to you behind,” Poe tells him, “but Rose told us Rey would kill us if we did.”
He has no idea who Rose is.
Rey is alive.
He slumps back on the bed, his heart in his mouth, his body trembling.
“You’re our prisoner,” FN-2187 tells him, but Ben isn’t listening. “Don’t try anything.”
What would he try? Rey is alive, and the Emperor is dead.
There is nothing left to want.
He passes out again soon after.
He wakes but he is sure he is still dreaming, because she is sitting next to his bunk with his lightsaber in her hands. Her hair is damp from the fresher, and her leg is bandaged. There are new scars on her arms and her face is pale and bruised.
She is more beautiful than the sun.
“You’re awake,” she says.
He grunts, pushing himself to sit. His body aches, but he barely notices.
“Are you…” she pauses, thinking the better of her question, looks at the saber in her hands. “You’re our prisoner,” she tells him. “They wanted me to remind you of that.”
He laughs and her head shoots up, wary.
“I am not likely to forget, given the circumstances,” he says, his voice rough from sleep. “Or the surroundings.”
His father’s ship.
She swallows.
He runs his hand through his hair and swings his legs over the side of the bunk. His tunic is stiff – with his blood, he assumes.
There’s something new and awkward between them. Something gentle.
“You need a shower,” she tells him, a smile playing on her lips. He offers her a tentative smile in return.
She stretches out her hand, holding his saber out to him.
He raises his eyebrows in surprise. She pushes the saber into his lap, and before she can take her hand away, he catches it between both of his own.
No gloves, nothing between them. Just her hand in his. His body feels like he might vibrate out of his seat, like he is on fire and ice cold all at once.
She stares at their joint hands for a moment, her mouth slightly open, before looking at him.
“Are you really here?” he asks her, emotion slipping into his voice.
He is not asking if this is a dream. He is not asking if this is the force connecting them.
“Are you?” she asks, finally, quietly.
The question weighs a thousand tons, but he does not hesitate.
“Yes,” he tells her. “I’m here.”