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Ben Organa is having a really, really bad day.
It started off normal enough, it started off great, his girlfriend woke him up by pouring water on his face, then trash talked his piloting skills in front of their friends until he agreed to a race, although they took said friends’ ships and not their own modified ones because otherwise it just wasn’t fair a race, and he was even winning for once –
- then he took a wrong turn in fucking space, and he’s pretty sure he flew through a wormhole except random wormholes don’t just appear out of nowhere next to his home planet without anyone noticing, and even if they did, he certainly wouldn’t survive going through one.
Except he did, and said girlfriend and friends are nowhere to be found, which, great, he’s in the middle of bumfuck nowhere space, that’s just awesome, that’s great for him.
Thankfully the force is good for more than cool piloting tricks and tinkering on his ship (not much more, in his opinion, but it’s not like anyone asks him these things) so it’s easy enough to search out for his force bond, for the other half of him that he can find anywhere and to follow that home.
Assuming she didn’t also get thrown through a random wormhole to the middle of nowhere, but even if she did, at least they can be lost together.
Luckily this is Finn’s ship, so it’s full of snacks. At least he probably won’t starve to death.
The bad news is he does end up on a middle of nowhere planet. The good news is that his girlfriend is there. Running through the woods. Okay. At least she doesn’t look hurt.
He abandons his ship to go after her, and it takes him longer than he’d admit to catch up. “Hey,” he says, “do you know where we are?”
She freezes and he ends up running several feet before he realizes she’s stopped and he goes back. She’s just starring at him, eyes wide, and – and frightened.
He looks behind her, hand going to his gun but nothing’s chasing her. Nothing he can see, anyway.
“Hey,” he says comfortingly, “it’s okay, we’ll get out of here.” He touches her shoulder, intending to draw her in for a hug, and the next thing he knows he’s jerked back twenty feet and his chest aches, a combination from the force and from how hard she’d pushed him all on her own. “Ow,” he says after a moment, blinking. “What was that for?”
She opens her mouth, closes it, then demands, “What are you wearing?”
“Wearing,” he repeats, confused. He looks down at himself. Boots, brown leather pants, a white long sleeve shirt, and his dad’s old vest. Pretty much what he always wears, and definitely the same thing he was wearing when she saw him last. On a second look, though, her clothes are different, more like the things she used to wear when she was kid and definitely like not anything in her closet anymore.
By the time Rey points a light saber at him, he’s barely even surprised.
She’s taking him somewhere, the saber to his back, and he just sighs. “You can put that away you know, if you want me to come with you then you just have to ask. Where did you land? I think you hit your head. What year is it?”
“Shut up,” she says tersely.
He rolls his eyes. It’s not long before they’re approaching something – not civilization, it’s not advanced enough for that, but some sort of camp. Okay. She’s hit her head, lost her memories, and made friends with the locals.
Except –
Wait a minute –
“HEY!” he yells, and she tenses. He turns around to point angrily in front of him. “That’s – what happened to my ship! How did it even get here? Are Finn and Poe here too? Did they follow us and take our ships here?”
She doesn’t say anything, which is fair, because she clearly has no idea who he is or what he’s talking about, but that still doesn’t explain how his ship, which had been in pristine condition this morning, looks like it hasn’t even been put through a maintenance check in a solid decade.
He turns back around, and everyone’s staring at him.
Luckily, there’s someone he recognizes in the crowd.
“Mom,” he says, relieved, moving past Rey and walking towards her. “Something happened to Rey, I think she hit her head,” and speaking of heads, “Are you wearing war braids? You can’t go into senate wearing those anymore, Dad said you make too many people nervous.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and he doesn’t like the look on her face. His stomach drops. “How did you find me? Is something wrong? Is it Dad? Or Luke? Or – I don’t know, what’s wrong?”
His mother raises a hand to his face, then pauses. He grabs it, pressing it to his cheek, willing her to find whatever she’s searching for so he can get some answers.
But as soon as he touches her, he knows.
She’s not his mother. Rey is not his Rey. That ship isn’t his ship.
“Oh,” she says softly, “oh, Ben.”
“That’s my name,” he says weakly, but the joke falls flat.
He doesn’t think he likes it here.
~
Rey doesn’t know what to think. She’s standing next to Finn because being near him calms her down, and she’s never felt less calm in her life.
“This is a trick,” Poe insists.
Leia shakes her head, but surprisingly it’s Finn who says, “No, that’s not Kylo Ren. If it’s a trick. he’s not in on it.”
“Some sort of appearance altering technology?” Holdo offers.
Rey has to clear her throat before she can speak, “No. No, it’s him. Just not our him.”
She feels the same bond with him that she feels with Kylo Ren, but it’s not the same, it’s stronger, cleaner, better. It doesn’t make her sick, it’s just there, warm and constant and buzzing at the back of her skull.
“So what? He’s telling the truth, and he’s from some sort of alternate universe where he never became a Jedi?” Poe insists.
“He knows you,” she says, “he mentioned both you and Finn. Maybe you should talk to him.”
They argue about it some more, but finally there’s nothing left to argue about, and they end up in the interrogation room.
Ben’s sitting in a chair with his hands bound and a dozen guns trained on him. He’s completely relaxed, and she’s pretty sure he’s having a staring contest with one of his guards. He doesn’t break it to look over to them, but he says, “Hi everyone. This is unnecessary, by the way.”
Because he’s not going to try and escape or because they wouldn’t be able to stop him if he did?
“How do you know me?” Poe demands.
Ben breaks his staring contest to look over at him, frowning. “You’re my best friend.”
“Don’t,” Poe starts, and Finn presses his hand against Poe’s back. He reigns himself back in, taking a deep breath, “But how do we know each other if there’s no – no war?”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” he says, “your dad’s in the senate too. So we were politicians’ kids with too much time on their hands. You liked to cause trouble, and you liked getting me into trouble too. It was fun.” He pauses, then addresses Leia, “We used to use Dad’s name whenever we got caught, don’t worry. I only had to pull the I’m Senator Leia Organa’s son card once.” He pauses and cracks a smile. “Okay twice, but the second time was absolutely Rey’s fault.”
He turns to her, a grin on his lips like he’s expecting her to be in on the joke that slips off when he looks at her face.
“What about me?” Finn asks, and out of all of them he seems to be handling this the best, but there’s something oddly intense about the way he asks that. “How do you know me?”
Ben opens his mouth to answer, flicks his eyes over Finn’s face, and it takes him a second too long to start speaking. “We trained together. General Pryde had – well, we couldn’t find your family, so Luke just trained you instead. We’re cousins. Kind off. And considering how you and Poe are joined at the hip, it’s not like I could get rid of you even if I wanted to.”
Rey’s chest hurts. Finn had a family? Had this family? She tries to be jealous for a moment, but can’t do it. There’s a universe where he was loved and cared for by the Skywalkers, and all she can manage is being desperately sad that that’s no the case here.
“What about her?” Finn asks, jerking a thumb in her direction.
Ben’s face softens in a way she finds unbearable, doesn’t know what to do with that look on his face directed at her. “When I turned fifteen, Dad let me fly the Falcon anywhere I wanted to go, and I just – flew. I didn’t think about it. I landed on Jakku. You tried to strip the ship for parts, I was so mad.”
“And then what happened?” she whispers, and Finn next to her is the only thing keeping her steady.
“You took my hand,” he says simply, as if that’s it, as if it was that easy.
Maybe, if it was Ben reaching for her, and not Kylo Ren, it would be.
“We can use this,” Poe says, gesturing to Ben, who pulls a face. “This is exactly what we need.”
Leia clears her throat. “What are you saying?”
As Poe continues talking, Ben doesn’t look any happier.
~
Ben hates it here.
There’s a him that’s evil, which, okay, that’s a surprise because if anyone was going to go to the dark side they’d kind all agreed that it would be Rey. Not because of her grandfather, but because of all her anger management issues. Here Rey was never picked back up from her shitty desert planet, Poe has multiple levels of post traumatic stress, and Finn not only wasn’t trained to be a Jedi, which is something he loves with a breadth of devotion and joy that’s very un-Jedi like of him, but was instead forced to be a stormtrooper for most of his adult life. And he’s also apparently keeping his force sensitivity a secret, for no reason Ben think of.
His dad is dead here. Dead because he killed him.
No, not him, Kylo Ren, who’s him on a technicality and nothing else.
He wants to go home.
But he can’t.
Not just physically. Everyone here has been convinced of the truth of his story, or at least that he’s not Kylo Ren, so he’s not a prisoner here, and he’s more than happy to fly around the universe trying to find magical worm holes if that’s what it takes, but it’s more than that.
His mother is wearing war braids and living in a tent.
It’s unacceptable.
“Okay,” he says, striding into the council room, which he’d feel bad about except his mom’s the general so they can all stuff it. “Fine. I’ll go along with Poe’s plan. Other me needs to die, and I’ll be the one to do it.”
“How are you going to manage that?” someone he doesn’t recognize sneers at him. “You can’t even use the force.”
He laughs, and it has an edge of hysteria to it.
How much of his life would be easier if he couldn’t use the force? If he hadn’t spent his childhood trying to drown Snoke from his brain with every bad idea Poe could come up with?
“I’m fixing my ship first,” he announces, “I’ll need to use your scraps.”
He walks out after that and feels a little bit gratified when Rey follows him.
The Millennium Falcon sits in all her old, patchwork glory, and it hasn’t looked like this since his dad gave it to him for his twentieth birthday. He took his role as the new owner of this ship seriously, and even if he hadn’t, neither Poe nor Rey can keep their grubby hands off modifying it either. Some days Finn is his favorite just because he never messes with his ship.
~
Rey’s not sure what she’s expecting, that he’ll march onto the ship and start rifling around in its guts, maybe.
Instead he holds out a hand, the Falcon lifts into the air, and then it breaks apart.
She screams, and he reaches for her before seemingly remembering that she doesn’t like him touching her. “Hey! Relax. It’s okay, it’s just easier to fix this way.”
She has to squint, but nothing’s sparking, nothing’s broken, it’s just with a single wave of his hand, he’s taken apart the entire ship, every bolt and wire, and is suspending it in the air.
“I didn’t become a Jedi,” he says, “but I did complete my training. I would have been too dangerous otherwise. Look, Poe’s right. If I can get onto Kylo Ren’s ship, who will stop me? I look just like him. I am him. I can destroy everything from the inside out. Get me a saber, and I’ll destroy him too.”
Rey doesn’t realize she’s crying until he slowly, cautiously lifts a hand to her face and wipes the tears away.
She never thought staring at this face – at Kylo Ren’s face – would make her feel hopeful.
~
Finn joins Rey in watching Ben do whatever the hell he’s doing to the Falcon.
“He’s making people nervous,” he says, leaning against her.
She nods, then admits, “He makes me nervous.”
Finn wonders what he would feel if he found out that there was a universe where he was dating a sith, and decides it would be much weirder than just finding out he’s friends with one. Or kind of cousins. “Could you do that?”
She gets quiet for a long moment, then shakes her head. “It’s hard, to be calm about it like he is. He has really good control. Maybe better control than,” she stops herself. “It’s not about limits, with the force. It’s about control, about controlling it without letting it control you. The more you can handle untainted, the power you have.”
That – doesn’t sound right, exactly. That’s not how the force feels to him, anyway, but it’s not like he can say that. “Oh. Well, it’s probably just a time thing. He’s had a lot longer to get used to it than you, after all.”
They sit in silence, watching Ben direct floating parts like some sort of demented symphony.
He wants to ask why Ben is keeping his secret, but that would admit to having one at all, and he’s not ready to do that.
The rebellion needs fighters. Poe needs someone at his back. If they find out that he’s force sensitive, he’ll have to give up running missions with Poe and start training with Rey, and it’s not that he doesn’t love Rey, because he does, but Poe needs him more, out there.
They both need her out there, but that’s just one more thing he’s not going to say.
~
Leia can barely stand to look at him, this man who her son could have been.
He’s everything she hoped Ben, her Ben, would be, and it hurts to know that it was possible, that Kylo Ren wasn’t an inevitability.
So she avoids him. The sooner he’s gone the better, because then she can stop having her failure shoved into her face.
One morning, before everyone is up, he knocks and then enters her room without asking, and she can’t even scold him for it. Because in another world why would he ask – she’s his mother, not a general.
She’s prepared for anything, for him to ask how she could have let this happen to him, to the galaxy, but he just asks, “Can I do your hair?”
She’s so surprised that she says, “Yes,” without really thinking about it.
He has big hands, but he’s not clumsy and he doesn’t hesitate, sitting behind her and running his fingers through her hair, looping and binding it. She must have taught him this, how to braid, and it feels strange to wear something different than what she’s been wearing every day for years.
“There,” he says softly, and she looks in the mirror and has to catch her breath. A half dozen looped braids on either side of her head, laying so they look like either a crib or a cradle, depending on the angle someone looks at them. Mother’s braids. “You wear these every year on my birthday.”
She can’t speak, and he doesn’t seem to except her to. Instead he kisses her on the cheek and mutters, “I love you, Mom,” before leaving her to get ready for the rest of her day.
The next morning, she braids her hair the same way.
~
Poe doesn’t want to talk to him. By the time he joined up with the rebellion Kylo Ren was already someone he hated, and when he found out that he was the General’s son, that just made it all worse.
But he can’t not talk to him, it seems.
He goes to his quarters, right next to the general’s. He raises a fist to knock, but then the door swings open and Ben is standing there, leaning against the doorway and smiling. “Force thing?” Poe asks, and tries not to sound resentful about it.
“I’ve known you since you were six,” he answers, “I know what your pacing sounds like. What do you want to talk about?”
He’s not saying anything wrong, is being perfectly friendly, but that’s the problem. Ben treats him like they’re friends, but Poe doesn’t even know him. “I just. Wanted to thank you for doing this.”
Ben sighs. “You know, usually I wouldn’t even hesitate when it comes to you plans, even ones that are dangerous like this. But it was because I knew you wouldn’t risk me if you didn’t need to, that you were weighing how necessary something was against how much you cared about me. But I don’t matter to you here, so I can’t trust that.”
“Sorry,” he says, and for the first time considers how much this must suck for Ben, being dropped somewhere with people that only look like those he loves, where he’s a monster and no one loves him. “I’d do it myself if I could.”
“I know,” Ben answers, “that’s why I agreed.”
“Don’t die,” he blurts, confused as to why he cares, suddenly.
Ben smiles. “Not planning on it. But thanks.”
It’s not enough, but it’s all he’s got, and Ben’s easy acceptance of that irritates him about as much comforts him.
~
Ben is all dressed and ready to go, in his helmet and ridiculous all black outfit which he’s absolutely going to have to use the force to keep from getting lint or dust on it, when he feels it.
He grabs Finn by the shoulders, grinning. “Can you sense that?”
“Um,” he says, and Ben remembers that he’s trying to keep all that a secret, and just tosses him his helmet and goes running.
“Hey!” Poe shouts.
He can feel her running, can feel another heartbeat under his own, and it’s weird, to feel two of them, but this one is different.
This one knows him back.
~
Rey jumps out of the Falcon after him, because he can’t get cold feet now. She follows him through the crowd, but then stops short.
That’s her.
There’s a version of her running through the everyone, using the force to push them out of the way. “BEN!” she shouts, and the two of them collide, wrapping their arms around each other.
Ben picks her up and spins her, and Rey doesn’t know if they realize it, but they’re floating several inches off the ground.
“Where did you go?” her double demands, gripping Ben’s face and pressing their foreheads together, “You scared me! You scared everyone! Do you know what I had to do to find you? It doesn’t matter, come on, we have to leave while we still can.” She grabs his hand and pulls at him, but he doesn’t move.
Ben’s looking at her, Rey realizes.
“I can’t,” he says.
Her double turns, glaring. “What do you mean you can’t?” Then she seems to see her, and her face drops, “Um, okay.”
“I need to do something first,” he says, “They need my help.”
“I don’t care what they need,” she answers, “I need you home. We need you home.”
He tugs her against him, and she goes but she’s glaring. “I can’t leave them without trying to help them.”
“Your dad will kill me if I don’t bring you home. I had to kick him out of the ship twice,” she says, then leans up and kisses him.
That could be her, she thinks distantly, if Kylo Ren didn’t exist, if he was a different man. If he was Ben.
~
Rey doesn’t want to stay and help out these strange mirror people. She wants to take her boyfriend, shove him into her ship, and get out of here while they still can.
“The wormhole will close in twelve hours,” she says, striding onto a version of the Falcon that’s almost right, her hand in Ben’s. “So whatever stupid plan you have better be done in ten hours.” She pauses, then looks to her boyfriend. “What is the plan? Is it why you’re wearing that?”
“I’m evil and we’re going to go kill me,” he answers. Rey stares at him, and when it becomes clear he’s not joking, she punches him in the shoulder. “Hey!”
“This place sucks,” she announces, and then huddles into his side. He sighs but puts an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. That helps settle her a little, but she’s wanted to leave this universe from the moment she entered it, and none of this is helping.
~
Ben, trained from a child and having never fallen to the dark side, would have been enough to take care of this all on his own, if he’d had to.
But he doesn’t have to. His Rey is here.
Getting this world’s Rey, Finn, and Poe to the control room of the ship is child’s play. “I’m pretty sure he has it set up so he can destroy his ships remotely, in case of a mutiny,” Finn says, poking around.
“Well, you figure that out,” he says, “Good luck with everything, hopefully I’ll never see any of you again.”
If everything goes according to plan, they’re going to go from Kylo Ren’s quarters to his girlfriend’s ship, and then straight through a wormhole back home.
All three of them pause. “Thank you,” Finn says, heartfelt, and Poe gives a jerky nod and Rey a tremulous smile. It’s not going to get any better than that, so he doesn’t linger for it.
He doesn’t have to borrow a lightsaber. His girlfriend brought him his mom’s, just in case.
When he finds himself face to face with Kylo Ren, he’s surprised at how normal he looks. It’s him. With a scar on his face, okay, but still him, still his face. No wonder everyone had been so freaked out.
Not his eyes, though. He doesn’t think his eyes have ever looked like that.
“You killed my dad,” he says, and his lightsaber springs to life in his hands.
“Interesting,” Kylo says, then reaches for his own lightsaber. The fight is short, because of course it is.
Kylo Ren never completed his Jedi training. Ben did, even if he chose a different path, and Rey’s way better than he is, because she chose the path of the Jedi and stuck to it.
Rey shoves a light saber through Kylo Ren’s chest, and when his heart stop’s beating, she reaches for Ben, burying her face in his chest, pressing her ear against his heart so she can both hear it and feel it. “This is going to give me nightmares,” she says quietly.
“Sorry, love,” he murmurs and kisses the top of her head. “Let’s get out here. It’s time for us to go home.”
~
The war is won in a single night, Kylo Ren dead and his army destroyed. Whoever is left is scattered to the wind and won’t be starting up another war anytime soon.
Leia mourns her son, but comforts herself knowing that somewhere out there, she has a son who’s happy.
Finn, as they’re running from Kylo Ren’s ship that they set to self destruct, finally tells Poe and Rey that he’s force sensitive.
There’s a lot of yelling.
~
Ben drives most of the way back from where the wormhole spits them out, Rey sleeping curled in the seat next to him with a death grip on his hand. He’d lost feeling in his fingers over an hour ago, but he can’t bring himself to pull away. If Rey had disappeared into a wormhole right in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t sense her after, he’d be a little clingy too.
He lands and wakes Rey up only because she gets grumpy when he carries her around places.
They barely make it to the front of their home before their door opens and Poe shouts, “They’re back!” and takes the steps two at a time, running toward him and throwing his arms around both of them.
Ben laughs, hugging him back, and over Poe’s shoulder he sees a stream of people emptying his home and coming towards them, his parents, Luke, and Finn among them.
He’s so, so happy to be home.