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Ben’s lightsaber fades into a softer shade of red and takes on a slight violet tinge throughout the months after Exegol. It’s noticeable. A strange hybrid of red and blue, the plasma permanently unstable due to the cracked kyber crystal he used for the modification seven years ago.
The crossguard single-handedly salvages the saber, guiding the light into the designated pathways instead of the untamed outburst it’d be naturally. What he made was the result of inexperienced construction, back when he was hurt and angry and so determined to join the dark side.
He hasn’t touched Anakin’s lightsaber since the defeat of Palpatine, just as Rey hasn’t used Leia’s since she built her own. Pure blue has no place in his hands; it’d only be tainted under his custody. He only keeps what belongs to him.
His lightsaber carries two decades of history. It carries the death of Han Solo and the destruction that comes with war. It reflects Ben’s depravity and corruption. A weapon is nothing more than a derivative of its wielder.
(And if it sparks red and flickers blue, changing, shaky and precarious, what does that say about him?)
Rey’s saber is all golden light and smooth edges. She brandishes it for training in the early mornings, before everybody else is awake. Sometimes, when she lifts it up into the air, Ben loses track of where the beam begins and ends, and it blends into the rising sun, merging into a single entity.
On days like this one, he sits on the ground and watches her practice, swinging and slashing, blade slicing through the air, away from the trees and grass and living, breathing creatures. Dew from the grass disperses onto Ben’s attire—simple cloth and neutral tones.
He never trains with her. Only observes. He’s done enough through experience. He’s done too much. Rey’s strikes are swift and precise, and her blocks are steadfast and grounded. She fights to defend and disarm, her moves planned and prepared. She takes a step to the side where Ben would’ve moved forward, and she slashes where he would’ve impaled.
(It’s a mercy that the scar trailing across his face and neck is lengthy as opposed to deep.)
Jedi techniques are often predictable, if difficult to counter. They are passed on from master to apprentice, altered and amended as all things are through the passage of time and filter of individuality, but the foundation is a constant. There is only so much space for variation when maintaining effectiveness.
But Rey is not a Jedi. Not really. Her apprenticeship was minimal and brief, and her strategies are built on what is instinctual instead of what is learned. Her fighting is independent from Jedi teachings. She is independent from the Jedi.
She comes from nowhere and is of the recent past. She met Finn not long before she left Jakku, and everyone else, she knows through the Resistance. Ben was an enemy to her before he was half of their shared dyad, and Palpatine was a target before she knew of her heritage, and finding out did not change matters. She is Rey, unrelated and unattached to anything and anyone.
She was Rey who did not belong in Ben’s preconceived narrative, because he was so certain he knew how it would end, and so confident he had the right to choose who fit in. She is Rey who began her own story, separate from Ben’s view and Palpatine’s wishes, Rey who knew the first version of him as a Supreme Leader and not as Ben Solo before he turned, and Rey who saw the light in Kylo Ren from the opposing side of a war.
She is not Leia Organa or Han Solo, who raised him to be good and lost him when he wasn’t. She is not Luke Skywalker, who taught him and betrayed him—brief but consequential.
She did not know him when he was a child, and she will never know the details of his fall to the dark side. To her, it was not a matter of bringing him back to the light. There was no original standpoint to compare him to. And yet:
He always was conflicted, and she chose to look at the light in every piece of that. She is Rey of stardust and galactic matter, of light and Force, and she has always been sure of where she belonged in the narrative.
She did not take his hand the day Snoke was overthrown, but she did propose her own offer, and it took Ben so, so long to see it.
It required an eternity for him to find his place here, on a planet-turned-base filled with vegetation and clean air, allegiant to the Resistance and against a First Order that is falling apart, half the result of their own undoing and half the product of being disassembled by its opponent.
When the overnight condensation evaporates from the grass and the early sunlight shines unrelentingly at Ben’s eyes, Rey finishes her morning practice and sits down beside him, lightsaber deactivated and hooked onto her belt.
Instinctively and without hesitation, she smiles at him, sweat beading at the edges of her hairline and strands of hair slipping out of her updo.
It was always meant to be this way, Ben thinks. She is graceful and blindingly bright, and he would’ve ended up here no matter how winded the path was or how long it took him to find his way back.
Darkness is defined as the absence of light and does not—cannot—exist on its own. Starships travel at light speed and the Sith fought with lightsabers. There is no power that is not borrowed from the light.
The light overpowers and conquers and consumes. It’s indescribably fast and unthinkably small; it passes through every crack and crevice and regardless of how the story went, one outcome is strikingly clear: there is no world in which Kylo Ren would have lasted. It was always going to end with Ben Solo.