Chapter Text
You aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be. A single, isolated X-wing painted in Resistance orange floating through space towards a First Order cruiser…
“Reason with him…” General Organa had asked you. Leia had asked you.
Reason... There is nothing reasonable about this. At any moment you could be blown to pieces, scattered across space. You’re sure the only thing keeping you alive is the mass, hysterical confusion that’s keeping the officers on the inside from giving the order to shoot. Yet, you press on. You press on because of the pleas of a mother. Someone’s mother. His mother. No, you are not Reason.
“It wouldn’t be an official mission,” she had said. “It wouldn’t even go on the books. It’s more of a covert operation. You’d be a spy, almost.”
Spy. Is that what you are? You’ve been a spy before. Spies don’t fly in the face of those they’re spying on. Spies hide to gather information, bring it back to the good guys, and beat the bad guys. Spies have a plan for getting into where they need to go. They have a plan for getting back out again. You are not a spy.
“Even if I could talk to him, he wouldn’t listen to me,” she had said. “But he might listen to you. You’re my last hope of getting through to him.”
Hope. Yes, that’s what you’re supposed to be, but it fits you wrong like a shirt that’s too tight across the chest. The title is a constraint; it presses you in. The weight of it is heavier, more crushing than your fear. You are Leia’s last hope that Ben will come home - a single, shaky X-wing fighter who is supposed to bring a boy back from the dead. How can you represent hope when you have none of your own?
The radio lights up. “Hold it, Resistance scum,” a voice warns. “We have you on your screens now. Identify, or we’ll shoot.”
They might just do so anyway, you remind yourself. “Diplomatic mission from the Ileenium System,” you manage in a wavering voice. “Ambassador transport requesting deactivation of the deflector shields.”
Nothing but static. Of course, what did you expect? Any moment now, you’ll be blasted into the cold vacuum of space. But a presence is whispering in the back of your mind. It finds the first loose stone in the wall around your mind and latches onto the opening until it’s all you can think about.
In a rage, you flick on the radio. “And if Kylo Ren is there,” you add. “Tell him that if he doesn’t let me in, I’ll tattle to his mother about him.” But, of course, he’s there. There’s no one else in the galaxy whose mere presence could inspire the same rage in you. There’s no one else whose presence you would feel as potently.
That’s why you’re not surprised when the disgruntled officer’s voice comes over the radio again. “ Clearance granted. Land in hangar two in the north quadrant .” He sounds disappointed like he had been hoping for a fireworks show.
You confirm and comply. Here it is before you: the moment of truth. You can see as plain as day how it will unfold. You’ll tell Ren you’re there to win him back, and he’ll laugh in your face and run his saber through you. He’ll tell himself it was justified. He’ll believe he is in the right. It’s what you deserved for refusing to join him when he offered it. After all, he’d given you one chance already. If you were lucky and if he was feeling merciful, he might keep you alive long enough to give you a second chance which you would flatly refuse once again. And the Dark Side will pull him in further and further into delusion until there isn’t even a memory of who he used to be.
But Leia had asked you to do this.
The army of stormtroopers that you expect to be at hangar two is not there. No one is there. The hangar is vacant as far as the eye can see. But there’s that presence again, sucking you in like a whirlpool. Oh, there is someone there. Someone who doesn’t want you to see him.
He’s watching you; you can feel it. He’s watching as you sit for another five minutes in your X-wing, gritting your teeth and steeling your nerves. He watches as you slap your cheek once just to get the blood flowing again, and he watches as you climb out of the ship and land firmly on the ground. In his territory, now.
“Well,” you say to the empty air. “Don’t be a coward, Ren. I’m unarmed, which is more than I can say of you.”
The silence rings in your ears until you hear his voice. Oh, Maker, you hear his voice, same as ever it was. “It’s been a long time.” He doesn’t call you love. That endearment used to punctuate every other sentence Ben Solo muttered to you. Not anymore.
“Not long enough,” you spit out. “I’m not here to talk to thin air, Kylo. If you don’t show yourself--”
“You’ll tattle to my mother about me?” He’s so close now. Just behind you with a voice that is suddenly modulated and stiff. Maker, you could turn around and see him if you wanted to. “You’re one of her Resistance pilots now, I see.”
Your fingers curl into fists. “Did the bright orange flight suit give it away?”
“It seems a pity to me. There was a time when you would have made a brilliant Jedi.”
At this, you turn, and you see his mask staring back at you. Empty. Emotionless. Dark and foreboding. One look and you’re beginning to understand what it must have been like to see Darth Vader in the flesh. Kylo’s fantasy leaking into a horrifying reality.
Still, you don’t stutter. “Is that your idea of a joke?” you grit, wishing to the stars you had your blaster so you could make him regret it.
He doesn’t answer you. His head tilts to the side, and his mechanical voice is almost soft when it says, “You haven’t changed…”
You wish your heart didn’t thud the way it did when he said that. “I wish I could say the same about you,” you reply. You can’t bear to face him any longer, and you can only hope that he doesn’t notice when you lower your eyes.
But he doesn’t have to notice. He could read you backward and forwards. He could recite you like a poem. He doesn’t have to notice that your eyes lower. All he has to do is look for your mind and find your fear. “You’re afraid of the mask.” He states it so matter-of-factly, not even giving you a chance to rebuff it. As if you would. Lying to him about anything is pointless. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not,” you snap suddenly, meaning it truly. You aren’t afraid of the helmet. You’re afraid of what’s underneath. You’re afraid that behind the facade there is a man -- a creature -- who still looks and sounds like Ben Solo. That is the fear that is radiating off of you.
Which is why he reaches up and removes the helmet.
It’s the familiarity of his face that strikes you first. It’s how it could have been another day at the academy… Another day of staring at watery brown eyes that used to make you happy just by their being. It’s how in a different life, those eyes might have smiled at you again. It’s the fact that despite everything, he still has Ben’s face, just like you feared. You lower your eyes again, and this time, you do not look up.
“I take it that General Organa is still leading the Resistance?” he questions.
You cringe at the impersonal way he chooses to refer to his own mother. “She is,” you confirm.
“Of course. Who else could inspire such loyalty in you?”
Kriff, you want to scream at him. Ben could have! Ben used to! Ben still would if there was a scrap of him alive somewhere! “Yeah, who else…?” you say instead.
“What about Han Solo?”
“Haven’t heard from your father or Chewie for a year,” you huff. “If you care about your family so much, why don’t you go back home and ask after them yourself?”
Out of the corner of your eye, you notice him look away from you. It’s only then that you get the courage to look at him directly. The sight of his nose in profile, his hair tousled back from his face… It’s almost too much, but you can’t make yourself look away. You don’t want to look away.
“Don’t ask me that,” he demands through gritted teeth.
“I’ll ask whatever the kriff I want,” you answer back the same way. “What are you going to do? Kill me? I came here with every expectation that you would.”
“Why did you come?” he asks.
The answer is becoming far more nuanced than the one you give. “Because your mother asked me to. She misses you.”
He turns back to you and fixes you in his gaze. He tilts his head, looks down his nose at you. “What about you? Do you miss me?”
You take a step towards him. You’re so close that you have to tilt your head up to look at him properly. You hope he can feel your breath on his face. You want it to sting. “I miss Ben Solo,” you whisper to him. “I don’t know who you are.”
Kylo grips your arms, and you’re sure he’ll leave bruises the size of his fingertips. “I am stronger and wiser than Ben Solo ever could have been,” he insists. “But in every other way, I’m the same. Can’t you see that?”
You wrench yourself away from his grasp. “Don’t you dare claim to be anything like Ben,” you say, warning hanging in your voice. “Ben was kind. Ben was gentle and scared. Don’t you dare.”
“You know so much and yet so little,” he counters. “If you only knew what kind of power you could have.”
“I don’t need power!” you say. “I never needed power. I just needed you!”
He’s staring at you like you just stabbed him, and it’s only then that you realize your mistake.
“Ben,” you correct yourself. “I needed Ben.”
Still, he says nothing and stays statue-still. It gives you time to notice how darkly the Force is moving around him. Time to notice the presence of stormtroopers outside the door, no doubt waiting for Ren’s command if you don’t comply with his wishes. He’s backing you into a wall.
“There’s no point,” you say after a pregnant pause. “No point in trying to convert me. I made my choice years ago.”
“So did I,” he finally says. “You have to realize that I can’t let you go. Not like I did the first time.” At this, the doors open. The legion of stormtroopers flood in.
“Of course,” you respond after a shuddering breath. “How could I expect anything different from you?”
Two troopers come to grab your arms and haul you to a restraining cell before Kylo can respond. You don’t see him for days afterward. In those days, you’re not interrogated or tortured, which defies your expectations. But except for a rotating guard and food once a day, you’re left completely alone which is arguably worse. It gives you too much time alone with your thoughts, and every time you remember Kylo’s face when you told him you needed him is worse than being flayed.
When he finally comes to see you, he’s maskless, but his face is hardened. He sits across from you and doesn’t speak for a long while.
You don’t want to be the first to talk, but the silence is killing you. “Can I help you?” you say at last.
“Do you remember when you first came to the Academy?” he asks.
“Yes, because it was you who asked me to.”
“Because I knew you were strong. I knew what kind of power you could one day hold.”
You smile a bitter smile and tilt your head to the side. “And all along I thought it was because you wanted me there with you.”
Perhaps he would never admit it, but you know him as well as he knows you. You notice the subtle shift in his jaw when he clenches his teeth. You notice the vein in his temple throb. Nevertheless, he doesn’t give you the dignity of a response. Instead, he says, “You mean to tell me that you haven’t continued to study the Force in all this time?”
“Why would I?”
“You could have become strong enough to defeat me.”
You look down at your open hands. Hands that could have killed him, if you had practiced more. Luke had asked you to before he disappeared. He had told you all about the balance that it was his duty to keep. A duty he couldn’t fulfill as a master without an apprentice. Still, you had refused. You were not the right person for the job, you had told him. What you hadn’t said was that you never could have killed Ben… Kylo… If it had come down to it, you would have failed. And you wouldn’t have been able to stop him.
“You would have killed me anyway,” you answer. “You were always going to, weren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t--”
“Stop lying to me,” you snap before he can finish his sentence. “You came into that hangar intending to kill me if I refused you again. I may be rusty, but my senses are still attuned enough to tell that much.”
“Yet, you’re still alive,” he points out. “Don’t you wonder why that is?” You look away from him, and you don’t see it when he leaves.
He’s gone for days again, and you begin to crave the sight of him. It makes you wish for a firing squad. How long will you be able to last like this? The Resistance has your loyalty, you have to remind yourself. Leia has your loyalty. The idea of a free galaxy has your loyalty. But Ben has your loyalty too, and there’s a tyrant who parades around with his face.
The next time you see him, he doesn’t waste any time with silence. “Why is it that you refuse to understand me?” he says. His voice is strained like he’s being choked. “I want to show you everything that Skywalker never would. I want to make you powerful as I have become.”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t want power,” you answer, keeping your eyes on your hands. You don’t want to look at him. You don’t want to become addicted to the sight of him. “Poor seduction tactic.”
After a moment, he kneels in front of you. You see his gloved hand slip into yours before you feel it. Every one of your limbs has gone numb, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut. “Look at me,” he demands coolly.
You don’t have the strength to refuse him. You open your eyes without a thought, without time to regret it. There’s Ben’s face, regardless of who is wearing it.
You aren’t sure if it’s him leaning in to capture you or you leaning in from complete desperation for him, but it doesn’t matter. He’s kissing you, and you’re kissing him back. The cracks in your resolve travel and widen until the whole thing is shattered on the ground.
He gathers you to himself as he stands, his hands pressing hard into your back as he lifts you. Your hands are tangling and tugging on his hair which elicits a low, dangerous noise from his throat. Maker, you shouldn’t be doing this, but that noise… the feeling of his mouth moving against yours… You’ve been so tired, and you don’t want it to stop.
He pulls away from you, his nose still brushing against yours. He’s breathing hard. His hot breath in your open mouth stings. “Do you want me to stop?” he whispers.
You hate him for it. He’s in your mind, sensing your thoughts. He knows as well as you do that you don’t want it to end. So, you don’t answer, and let him kiss the curve of your jaw, under your earlobe, down your neck. He doesn’t see the angry, bitter tears rolling down your cheeks.
You’re pulling him closer by his hair, all the while muttering inaudibly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
He’s muttering, too, as his fingers bunch the fabric of your shirt. Of all the things he’s saying, only one sentence comes through clearly. “Please, let me show you who I am… Please…”
But you have no interest in who he is now, and you realize that as soon as you can comprehend what he’s saying. You’re letting him kiss you because he has the face of a dead boy, and he’s kissing you to destroy you.
“I want Ben back,” you gasp suddenly and louder than all of the words you’ve spoken thus far.
He stills completely at this, and the Force flows darker around him than it ever has before. After a moment’s hesitation, he lets go of you completely and leaves the cell without giving you so much as a look at his face.
You see him again when you’ve lost count of how long you’ve been in that same restraining cell. The bruises he left on your neck have already darkened and faded. There’s no physical remnant of the last time you saw him. So, why can you still feel him all over you?
Then without any warning, he walks through the door. He sits next to you, close enough to touch, once again silent and contemplating. You’ve already had enough of silence. “Aren’t you going to say something?” you question.
“I’m thinking,” he says.
“Oh, well,” you scoff. “Excuse me.”
Another long silence before he says, “You’ve never been tortured here, have you?”
“Define torture.”
“I don’t know if you would survive it,” he says, ignoring your quip. “You’re strong, but there are few people who are strong enough to survive the methods the First Order employs for an extended period.”
You hummed. “Is that what you’re planning on, then?” you ask.
“No. Not to you,” he snaps immediately. “But it’s what others in the ranks are planning on. I’m trying to decide what to do about it.”
“Oh,” you whisper. No more questions. You had pressed him enough already, but you long to peer into his mind and discover what’s going on.
“Why are you prodding?” Kylo asks you.
“Didn’t mean to…”
“But you want to know,” he says. “You want to know if I would let them torture you. Or maybe I would do it myself. Watch you bleed and suffer. Push you past your breaking point. Wait for you to beg to learn from me, but it would be too late. Do you think I would? You can ask.”
You remain silent, eyeing him skeptically.
He sighs, and your heart hurts for how tired he sounds. “You still don’t trust me.”
“You just described torturing me,” you answer. “That’s hardly grounds for establishing trust.”
“And nothing else would?”
Despite yourself, you smile. “The kissing didn’t do much for me on that front if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But doesn’t it tell you anything?” he asks. His voice has become desperate, almost pleading. It drops the smile right off of your face. “Doesn’t it explain why you haven’t been tortured the entire time you’ve been here? Doesn’t it explain why I didn’t kill you? Why I couldn’t kill you? I should. I should do it right now. But I can’t, because every time it crosses my mind I start to collapse. There is something weak and detestable in me that is still clinging to you.”
He tilted his head until he was looking at you. How reminiscent the scene was. How often you used to see him just like this, sitting side-by-side and spilling your souls in words neither that were simultaneously incomprehensible and true. And then you saw him. For the first time in years, you saw Ben Solo alive and buried deep. A faint spark somewhere in the darkness.
Slowly, you began, “Could it be that you still love me somewhere deep down?”
He looks away from you and down. “Would it matter?” he questions. “I seem to recall you saying that you want Ben Solo back.”
“It matters,” you promise him. Of course, it does. Kylo Ren isn’t capable of love. If there is any part of him that loves you still, that’s the part of him where Ben Solo is still struggling for life. “It matters to me.”
Then slowly, fearfully, you reach for his hand. You just barely brush your fingertips into his palm at first. There is no warmth there. No cold either. Just a leather glove separating your fingers from his skin. It makes you pause and wonder if you’re being reckless when he doesn’t respond. Oh, but then… His fingers wrap around yours slowly with just as much fear. Leather glove or not, that’s Ben’s hand. It couldn’t be anyone else’s.
The pair of you remain like that for another thirty minutes while you let him think. He squeezes your hand before he leaves.
He doesn’t let days pass this time. He’s back within a couple of hours with a pair of handcuffs that he claps on your wrists without a word, but he looks into your eyes and nods. Just that is enough to make you feel safe. He leads you through the halls of the cruiser with his hand on your lower back. If anyone questions this, they don’t say. You guess that no one wants to openly question Kylo Ren.
You reach hangar two, and it’s just as empty as it was when you first landed in it. A shuddering sigh escapes you when you see your X-wing looking as good and new waiting for you.
Behind you, Kylo leans down to whisper in your ear. “If you leave now,” he says, “Never come back. Don’t even think of it. Don’t ever try.”
If… There shouldn't be an 'if.' He's offering you an escape, and that should by all rights be your only option. But you know he's offering more. You know he's waiting for you to turn to him and say, "And what if I stay?"
But you can't bring yourself to. "Understood," you say instead. A faithful subordinate taking an order from a commander. Impersonal and cold.
Now would be the ideal moment to walk away, but you feel cemented where you are. How can you truly leave him? That spark you saw is glowing brighter every second.
"What would you do if I stayed?" you finally ask, knowing full well the danger of a hypothetical.
"I'd get on my knees and pray to you," he says. "I'd do whatever you wanted."
"Would you become Ben again?" you ask.
He hesitates just a moment. "I'd let you call me Ben."
At last, you turn to face him. You're dangerously close. "That’s not the same,” you point out.
He doesn't have an answer for that, and you don't have time to wait for one. You're able to rip your eyes away from him just long enough to throw a glance over your shoulder to your ship. It's time you returned to the Resistance.
But he's grabbing your hand and bringing it to his face, eyes closed as your knuckles graze his cheek. “Stay,” he breathes.
“I can’t,” you tell him.
“Please, love, stay with me,” he whispers, pleading.
It’s breaking your heart, knowing that you have to leave to where he can’t follow. How easily you can imagine that spark of Ben fading away if you leave him now. You suppose that’s why you reach up to hold the side of his head just to feel him lean into your touch. It’s why you stand up on your tiptoes and press your lips to his.
It’s nothing like your last kiss. It’s not the whirlpool drawing you in before you can stop it. Instead, it’s the slow, gentle rhythm of the tide lapping on the shore and fading back out.
Heat turns to warmth. Fear turns to hope. A hope that floods so much so that when you pull away, you keep your forehead against his and say, “Find me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Away from here. Away from the Resistance. Find me.”
He nods and lets you go.