Chapter Text
Ben Solo ascends.
He ascends. Not in the way Kylo Ren would have wanted to, but the way Ben knows he must. His body is broken. He can feel it with every movement, the broken bones and the all-consuming ache. He ignores it, uses the Force to keep the loose ends together and climbs. She is alone and he has a promise to keep, so he climbs. The world rattles and there are violent waves in the Force that shake him to the core. There is a sound, somewhere above, like the world is ending and the skies falling. He prays to the Force that she is not falling with it.
With sheer will and Force he makes it to the top and seeks her instinctively. She lies on the floor in the middle of the destruction and rubble, unmoving on her side. He has known fear before, but never like this. Never like this. Yet, he can still feel her lingering in the Force, clinging on, but fading fast, so he makes his way to her, one agonizing step at the time.
He gathers her up and, stars, why is she so small? She was never so small before, surely. Her eyes are open, seeking his, and there is a flash of recognition and relief, before they are closing and she is fading.
“No,” he grits out, desperate, and reaches out with Force, grasping for her.
Ben, calls a voice somewhere, his mother’s, calm and comforting. There is a breath trapped in his chest and he lets it out slowly and closes his eyes. His hand comes to rest on her, gently, carefully. She saved his life once, so it is easy to return the favour, the Force jumping eagerly to return to her. He lets it go, willing to give all of it, if he must.
In the end, it does not come to that. She comes to with a breath, a slight hand coming up to cover his and a dry, desperate sound, almost like a sob, escapes him. She is worn, broken, listless in his arms, but alive. Hazel eyes are seeking his and warming with something foreign.
“Ben,” she breaths and smiles, and whatever is left of his heart breaks. She reaches a hand out to him, brushing his face, and then kisses him, briefly and recklessly but decisively.
If he had not forgotten a long time ago how to cry, he is sure he would do it now out of sheer wonder and relief. His grip on her tightens and she breaths a pained hiss against him. Gently, gently. If she is in half the pain he is, it is a miracle she is conscious at all. He loosens his hold and settles her down carefully on the dusty floor. He checks her injuries meticulously, but she seems to be mostly whole, only depleted and worn to the core.
She stares at the sky and the flickering lights of the space crafts in the dawning light. He has trouble looking away from her, so he doesn’t bother trying.
“I don’t think I can walk,” she admits after a while, quiet and raspy.
“I don’t think I can carry you,” Ben replies.
The oppressive gravity of Exegol is getting too much to bear, so he allows himself to collapse on the stone floor next to her. She is close enough to touch, but he doesn’t dare now that he has no excuse. He lies there and stares at her bloodied, tear-tracked face, committing it to memory.
She turns to look at him, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards. She’s beautiful, even like this. Especially like this; victorious and alive, undefeated and unyielding. Ben knows he loves her, but what is one more sin among the others. This is one of his lesser ones.
“Thank you,” she says, then. He blinks his confusion at her and she amends, “For coming.”
It was never a choice. She is like gravity to him, inevitable. He searches for words to express this, but nothing is forthcoming, so he only nods. She must know by now, after everything.
There are movements in the shadows, quiet, but undeniably there. Eyes watching, waiting, defeated but not gone.
“We cannot stay here,” he points out.
“What? You were quite insistent that we come. The decor not to your liking after all?” she asks and it is as if she slapped him, unexpected and stinging. But her face is serene and she peers at him through her half-closed lids. She is teasing him, he realizes and doesn't know what to do with it.
He glances around the grim rubble, the broken pillars and the deep grooves in the stone where the throne used to sit.
“No, I quite like what you have done with the place,” he says and it is too serious a response, his voice lacking the correct lilt and lightness, but she does not seem to mind. She is smiling at him again like she has no intention of stopping. It still lingers on her face, when she too steals a look around and heaves a weary breath.
“You’re right. We can’t say here,” she says and begins to gingerly climb up. He moves to help her, ignoring the flare of pain in his own body. In the end it’s impossible to say who is helping who, as they limp through the darkness.
“You should go,” he says when they begin to reach the surface, even though it pains him worse than any of his numerous physical injuries. “There are people expecting you.”
“Not without you,” she replies and she is resolute, determined, and he is so incredibly tired, and has been for such a long time that he doesn’t even try to argue.
He is ultimately selfish, always has been.
...
“This is a bad idea,” he points out, even though she must know it.
“I have to see them,” she says, “To be sure that they’re alright.”
“You should have left me on Exegol,” he says, but doesn’t say, you should have left me for dead, because he is too self-serving for that, even if it is the truth.
They come out of the woods to a flurry of noise and people and wildly beeping droids. Her eyes are searching the crowd, urgent and quicksilver fast. When she finds what she is looking for, a soft sound leaves her, something between a sigh and a sob and a cry, and with quick half-running steps she leaves his side. He wonders, idly, if he will ever have her within a reaching distance again, while he stands there counting seconds to the inevitable that they realize his presence.
She skips through the crowd and throws himself at the black man who is the first to reach her, but mere second later another man joins them. Ben recognizes them easily enough, FN-2187 and the spice runner pilot that intercepted rebellion messages had long painted as his mother’s successor. As if anyone could live up to Leia Organa's impossible standard.
They cling to each other, the three of them, desperately and oblivious to the world. It stirs something uncomfortable in him, something that makes his fingers itch for the cold comfort of a saber. Ben is not jealous, per se, because he knows that it is different, less significant and less predestined than whatever resides between himself and Rey, but maybe envious of their casual intimacy.
FN-2187 notices him first and then there is a blur of motion, yelling, and mere seconds pass before every blaster in the clearing is directed at him. Rey looks at him with something like alarm and Ben very carefully does not let his blank expression slip, but he did tell her.
“Rey, Rey, what the fuck?” the pilot is yelling, “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“I could hardly leave him there, now could I?” she’s yelling back, equally agitated now, while FN-2187 is pulling at her arm, as if to tug her behind his back and it is a ridiculous notion that he could protect her from him of all people.
Rey wrenches her arm free. “Dameron! Can we just talk-"
“Can’t we just kill him?” someone suggests.
“All in favour say ‘aye’,” Dameron calls out, all anger and reckless heat, and calls aye immediately after. There are multiple voices that join him.
“Democracy,” the pilot says, smugly, like he is winning an argument, and Ben calculates quickly that he has just enough time to deflect the blaster shot if he calls one of Rey’s sabers to him and he’ll have most of them dead before Rey has the time to--
“No!” Rey cries out, sharply, a lone voice of disagreement. Eyes turn to her at once, accusing, but she stands her ground, “No, we can’t kill him.”
“Why not? He’s done enough to deserve it,” Dameron points out and his aim does not waver.
“Because he saved my life,” Rey argues and she takes the steps that put her between Ben and the blaster. He makes an automatic, aborted movement towards her, before he catches himself. The desire to shield her is instinctive, though decidedly unnecessary. She has proven herself, and there’s very little a measly pilot with a blaster could do. The man lets the blaster fall to his side immediately, anyway, but his face does not lose any of the rage.
“Oh, how very noble! So his saving lives to taking lives ratio is, what, one to a couple million?” he bites out and though his numbers are off, the point is valid.
Rey is stubborn, her jaw jutting out and eyes flashing. “It’s not right and you know it!”
It would be the right thing to do, Ben knows, but under the circumstances he cannot allow it, so he interrupts, “Killing me now would mean killing her as well.”
There’s a beat of confused silence, so he carries on, “We’ve exchanged an equal measure of life Force. We’re no longer separate in it, but one.” He pretends indifference when he says it, but when Rey turns to look at him, startled, the significance of it cuts him to the core.
He reaches for Force experimentally, lightly, and it flows through her first, as if she were the one using it. Her eyes widen minutely, so he knows she feels it too. He tugs a loose lock of hair behind her ear with it and acknowledges that it might be the least violent thing he has ever done with the skill he has been given.
It’s FN-2187 who speaks next, “If you’re pulling this out of your ass--”
“He’s not,” Rey interrupts. Her expression is open with something vulnerable. “I can feel it.”
She tugs at the Force as she says it and he feels it in his very bones. He sways towards her, but common sense wins before the dozen blasters aimed at him and he forces himself to stand still. Fortunately, no one else seems to notice his lapse, but Rey looks suddenly amused, carefully playful.
“Well, we have to do something about him,” someone points out and the light leaves Rey’s face. There’s sudden, furious urge to throttle, but he crushes it quietly, determinedly.
“He stays with me,” Rey says and there is little room for argument in her tone. The pilot opens his mouth to argue, anyway, but she interrupts him, “General, not today. Please.”
She sounds tired and pleading and Dameron folds.
“By the stars, Rey, if he steps one toe out of line…” he says, still agitated and clearly searching for an expression strong enough to match his fervent tone.
Ben knows what she will say, before she even opens her mouth. She is proud, reckless, and endlessly righteous, so of course he knows. Her eyes are on him, when she spells the words, “Then I’ll kill us myself.”
Ben can’t quite help it, he smiles at her. She blinks, confused and suddenly less certain.
The rebellion General visibly flounders, before nods slowly, “That is not the answer I was looking for, but fine. Just keep him in line.”
...
Later, when they’re alone, but not really, he says to her quietly, “That is quite clever. Keeping what I want a hostage under the pain of death to keep me in line.”
He does not spell it out, does not say how it would have made her grandfather proud, because she is clever, indeed, and can make the connection. She shoots him a glare.
“You’re the bane of my existence,” she says, but it lacks the viciousness he knows she is capable of, so he counts it as a victory.