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He’s left standing on the wreckage of the Death Star, soaked, shivering and relieved.
He had had to wade through the darkness by himself for so long, moving through it as it tugged at him pulling him further and further away from any hope of standing in the light again. Now, as waves crash around him on this unimportant wreckage on a moon that mattered decades ago he feels the warmth of the light he’d been steered away from for so long, and he feels buoyant. Kylo Ren died when the girl ran her light saber through his stomach. He died and was reborn in the final breath of Leia Organa. He was found when he sought forgiveness from his Father, Han Solo. He was Ben again, and Ben was cold and soaked through and now had no light saber and a hole in his jacket.
Climbing back through the wreckage was easier once he left behind the cape that had so long flowed behind him. Ben carefully placed one foot under the other as he climbed down a fallen tower and braced himself against cold metal when waves crashed against the wreckage and made it tremble. Some part of him questioned how he had even made it up there to begin with. He moved slowly, feeling naked, no longer under the protection of his carefully built other self. Above him a piece of metal scraped against something unseen and sent sparks flying down around him. He glanced up briefly, then relaxed into the Force and jumped backwards from the tower, twisting himself to land on a half hidden platform just as a piece of the tower clattered loose from above him and plummeted into the raging swells below. Ben felt more keenly the jolt of his landing and shook out his arms which weighed heavy from the strain of his climb. Part of his jacket was smoldering where a spark had landed on it and caught. Ben shrugged out of the padded coat and belt and left them there on the landing without a second thought. He pushed his way down the dark hallway that led towards where he had left his TIE fighter, using the Force to feel for obstacles that had previously only been illuminated by saber light.
Sitting in the cockpit of the imperial ship felt foreign in the way that something you’ve done a hundred times before feels new when you’re in a good mood, and supposedly that’s what Ben could call this feeling, this lightness that had his world feeling brighter and different. He thinks he’s in a good mood and it’s strange, but he pushes his hair off his face and catches his reflection in the window. He looks like the 28 year old man he is. The scar that had disfigured his cheek is the smallest of pink lines now and the wrinkles and paleness he’d come to recognize are gone. He’s got his Mom’s fathomless brown eyes and there’s a hitch to his lips that sits in a trademark Solo Smirk and he finds that for the first time in such a long time he likes his reflection. It’s another small thing that Ben marks in the back of his mind as something light and something he’d missed with an impossible to describe ache since he’d fallen under Palpatine’s influence.
There’s a tug then that comes from deep inside of his soul and Ben knows it’s Rey and that he’s supposed to follow. She’s following the Wayfinder to Exogol, to Palpatine and to something that he can’t see the other side of. Ben knows that he’s supposed to follow and he does. The TIE Fighter whirrs to life under his hands and he’s off like a shot into the unending sky. It happens without warning and as naturally as breathing, but Ben feels her settle into the co-pilot seat and he doesn’t mind the tears that run hot down his cheeks.
“You don’t have to go back” Leia’s voice comes, so far away and close to him at the same time.
Ben’s lips twitch as he fights with a decade of stoicism and his genetic disposition for absolute snark.
“I want to…it feels…right.” He didn’t expect his voice to crack, but it does and she laughs at him.
“I never gave up on you, Ben. I never will,” Leia’s voice and presence falters and she pauses as if listening to someone else speaking to her. Ben feels her smile from behind him and he wants to join her, but Exogol bursts into view as he comes out of Hyperspace. “I love you Ben. The Force is with you. Always.” She’s gone with a breath and Ben quirks an eyebrow as he remembers the Sith temple.
“Let’s hope you’re right, Mom.”
***************
Moving through the world now is different. He’s so much faster than he was before. His undershirt flutters against his skin as he charges through the dark hallways of the temple. He can feel his Forcebond to Rey pull him through the ancient place, like a hot punch to the gut that only eases as he gets closer to her. He sees the gaping maw where the elevator stone should be, but it’s already down, its last passenger long gone back into the labyrinth of stone. Ben doesn’t stop to think about this and charges forward, leaping into the hole. It dawns on him that it’s not a fall he could survive, even with the Force flowing through him, so he alters his trajectory and lands onto a link in a massive chain, the wind knocked out of him with the impact.
The “Ow” he mumbles out is swallowed up by the darkness of the cavern. The lightning storm of the dying planet flashes around him, illuminating his only path down along the length of chain links he’s barely able to cling to. He sighs then, caught up in his sense of duty and the regret that he doesn’t have more on him than a blaster and years of Force training. He wraps his legs around the link and shimmies himself downwards.
“I think,” Ben mutters as his feet hit solid ground, “that I don’t want to do that again.” He claps his hands together and the sound echoes around him in the vastness. “Ok, Rey, where are you?” Ben squares his shoulders and turns until the spot in his soul sets itself ablaze and heats him up from the inside. He follows the tug down the nearest hall, the loose sand softens his foot falls and he runs towards her.
Ben is so absorbed in letting their force bond guide him that he almost misses the shimmer of movement across the open space he’s crossing. Almost. Decades of paranoia keep him sharp and he ducks as something soars over his head. Ben un-holsters his blaster as he dodges the attack and fires off a shot at his assailant. The blast echoes in the chamber, but so does the thud of a body hitting the sand. When he looks up again, six cloaked and masked figured stand around him and he scowls. The Knights of Ren. He was their leader only yesterday and now he’s here to destroy everything they’d worked so hard to build. Ben raises his hands up and turns around, both feet shifting through the sand as his mind starts working out who he has the best chance against in hand to hand combat.
“Now guys, let’s think this through,” He smirks at someone he thinks is the youngest of them. He never bothered to learn their names, which he starts to realize was a mistake. They knew each other, had bonded to each other while he kept to himself and they don’t seem to have any qualms about killing him here and now. They probably plotted this scenario a hundred times with each other in the dark and now it’s better than they could have ever hoped. The big one with the battle axe lunges forward and Ben jumps back, barely avoiding the hit. He brings the blaster around to fire it, and he has to use it to block as the big guy moves fast and is already starting to swing the axe again.
“Six on one is hardly a fair fight,” he says with a grunt. Ben swings a punch as he steps backwards and turns to land it on the smallest knight. They all set upon him with that, and he starts dipping between them, landing one hit for every three steps he takes away from getting hit himself. Somewhere in the fray his blaster gets taken away from him and thrown into the darkness. A hit to his brow follows it and someone splits his lip. Ben’s panting and can taste blood as the Knights of Ren back him into a corner.
“I’m warning you guys, this isn’t gonna end well for you,” Ben wheezes out as Rey materializes into his line of vision. They make eye contact and Ben sees the shift from fear to relief as she drinks him in. He feels her intent, knows what she’s about to do as she does it. He feels the light saber drop into his hand and he knows whose it is, feels the cold metal in his fingers and the kyber crystal inside thrumming, waiting to jump to life for him. Rey’s gone after that and the corner of Ben’s mouth hitches up into the smirk that’s starting to feel so natural.
“Last chance to get out of here alive,” Ben fights the excitement in his voice and the light saber in his hand crackles to life, illuminating the darkness. He carves through them with ease after that, and follows the Force tug in his chest into the auditorium of the Emperor.
Ben stands beside Rey, and Palpatine is talking and suddenly they get pulled to their knees and Palpatine cackles, but Ben’s ears are rushing with the sound of the light he’d just found being sucked out of him. Rey screams next to him and he wants so badly to reach out to her, to take her hand. If they could just touch each other they could fight this, but he’s too weak and the Emperor says something about killing them and Ben feels his body burn with the crackling of electricity as it gets pumped into him from the only enemy he’s ever truly had. It would be so nice, he thinks, to just relax and stop fighting and so he does, and he collapses and lands on the stone with a heavy thud and Rey collapses next to him and the sound is so soft it breaks his heart.
And Ben realizes that he loves her in that second and suddenly an entire life flashes before his eyes of soft smiles and brushing stray hairs from her face and lying in the warmth of the light, and he aches for it so badly that he’s angry to be lying in the dark on a cold stone floor. He stirs and gets up, his mind filled only with reaching Rey, of holding her, being with her fighting beside her and helping her bring balance to a universe that needed her to heal. He senses the attack too late and he’s pulled off the floor and flung across the room and into a chasm. Someone screams NO and he’s not sure if it’s him or Rey and if it really matters because they’re two halves of the same whole. It’s getting darker the more he falls and it dawns on him that he needs to stay alive a little bit longer, so he reaches out with his hands and the Force and slows his fall just enough that when he lands on the ledge it’s his ankle that snaps and not his neck. The spot in his soul that ties him to Rey burns and pulses, calling him back to her with increasing urgency.
Her voice resonates in his chest as she lies on her back, back in the Sith Throne room as she pleads with the galaxy and the Force, tears in her eyes as she holds onto the last thread of hope she has. “Be with me…be with me…be with me.”
“I’m here.”
**********************
The climb takes so much of his strength that Ben doesn’t notice at first that the pull he feels slackens. His hand grips the edge of the cliff and he pulls himself over the edge, shaking and bruised and in shock from the pain. He only gets one steadying breath before he realizes that the air has shifted and Rey is lying motionless on the floor and the mechanism that had kept Palpatine alive is empty. Relief mixes with panic and Ben drags himself over to Rey as fast as he can and scoops her into his arms as he falls next to her. She’s cold and he’s cold and her lips are blue and her eyes are glazed over and Ben bites back the sob that rises like bile in the back of his throat. He pulls her limp body against him and for a moment he thinks “This is what a hug is. How sad and awful is it that I’ve forgotten this.” The moment passes and he lowers Rey, angling her so that he can hold her small body in one arm. He places his hand against her torso and the dumb back part of his brain thinks it’s so nice how small she looks and how she’ll be so dainty to hold in his arms when all this is over. The functional part of him knows what he’s supposed to do, what he was probably always meant to do when things turned to this.
He steadies his breathing and opens himself up to the Force. It flows through him like a flame, warm and not something he can grasp, but it dances through him and he feels it wash into her and turn to water as it fills in the cracks that her own soul had slipped through. Above him, in the skies of Exogol starships jump into hyperspace and the Final Order’s fleet crumbles in the atmosphere and he feels the lives that have joined the Force and the people who’ve lived to see another day. He feels the planet surge around it all and beneath his fingers Rey’s stomach rises and falls with the sharp inhalation of a breath.
Ben’s eyes flicker open and he realizes that Rey’s eyes are the softest mossy green he’s ever seen. He rests a hand on her cheek and she grabs his face in both of her hands and kisses him like it was something she has always done. She’s laughing against his lips and when she pulls back he feels himself smiling for the first time in an achingly long time and then the world is falling sideways, or he is and the cold stones rise up to catch him and Ben’s still grinning like an idiot even as he feels himself slipping away. Rey paws at him, he’s aware that she’s in distress, angry that she got to come back in exchange for him, but Ben relaxes instead of rising to meet her cries. He’d been tired for so long and this feels right, like he finished what had been started by Anakin Skywalker so long ago. Not the Empire, but something so much more powerful, something full of love. Life.