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1
As he entered the cool dark of his starship, Kylo Ren wondered whether the day would ever come when he wouldn’t think of his father as he initiated the flight sequence. It didn’t matter that these engines, stroked to life so efficiently and effortlessly, sounded nothing like the Falcon’s ever-last gasps. His pilot seat’s leather, the color of pitch, wasn’t cracked and didn’t smell of caf and misguided bravado. This console’s lighted switches stood all in their rows, awaiting orders--nothing like the hodgepodge of levers and buttons Han Solo seemed to have acquired from some Jawa’s garage sale. No, it didn’t matter. A ship’s a ship, kid.
He wondered if the day would ever come when he didn’t think of himself as his father’s son. As Ben. A name too powerful to shoulder, and not nearly powerful enough.
It fit on her tongue, though, didn’t it? She spoke the word as if it should fit him just as well.
His eyes flickered closed against the Light. When he opened them he punched in the coordinates. A small fleet would accompany him, his Knights among them. Answers waited, even if he couldn’t see where Rey was. Where they were, with her.
He bit the inside of his cheek to overpower the wince that always accompanied thoughts of his mother. Leia was the Resistance. Kark it all. How much more proof--
A tug.
The thought exhaled from him, a single breath lost in a warm breeze, and suddenly he was with her. Rey.
On another starship, it seemed, judging by the lights reflected on her face and how her eyes darted from points low in front of her to higher, farther away, her fingers dancing expertly over unseen controls.
He swallowed and clung to the corners of her awareness, trying to remain in the darkness, if such a thing were possible through the bond that tethered them together. He wanted to shut his eyes, turn away; but she was distracted, and he couldn’t help but watch her. Even as he saw the console on his Upsilon, he couldn’t unsee her, how her thigh flexed as she planted a worn boot on her own starship’s console.
The Falcon. It had to be.
His heart lurched just as Rey’s gaze whipped toward him to fix him where he stood, and he saw.
Before he could voice a question--had she opened her mind, or had the bond deepened?--he looked through her eyes at a world too large, parched and sun-blanched, with death all around. He saw her thin arm gripped in the meaty fingers of some adult creature, her child’s voice screaming, screaming, as a starship slashed the bright sky like a rivulet of mercury--quick, poisonous, gone. It stayed in her head, then and now, and yet…
Her eyes still bore into him as he emerged, panting and furious with fear, from the memory.
“It wasn’t them,” she choked out. My parents. It wasn’t them. All this time I thought it was.
The last words erupted inside his head. So the bond had changed. Or perhaps she had.
“That whole first year, every starship I saw--” I thought it must be them, they came back for me. “I told myself that pretty silver one was theirs. I wanted it so badly to be.”
Another memory burst forth, exploding on his tongue and behind his eyes, filling his sinuses with the scents of grease and sweat, the sounds of a man and woman bellowing at each other, punctuated by horrifying days of silence that ricocheted between his ears.
“You remember,” he said, shaken. Let the past die.
She nodded. Closed her eyes, breathed. Her dark eyelashes dampened.
He shivered. Where are you?
The bond took him away. His hand, a dark shape outlined in the spectral light of his own console, still stretched toward her.
2
“So we’re supposed to accept,” said Poe as he draped an arm over the couch’s seat back, “that even though Kylo Ren framed you for Snoke’s murder he’s the one who did it?” He wrinkled his chin and seemed to consider. “Actually, I’ll buy it. That fits.”
Rey sighed and leaned into the doorway of the Falcon's hold, longing for escape. She focused her attention on the dejarik table strewn with holopads, each one displaying a planet in a different sector of the galaxy. They couldn’t run indefinitely. The Resistance needed to set up base, no matter how few of them remained now. Having a place to call home was the only hope for growing their numbers.
Poe’s gaze slid to Leia, who sat next to him. She regarded Rey with shrewd eyes, but at least she believed her when she’d told the group that Ben might yet turn. But Poe wouldn’t budge.
“You thought he’d come home and just--”
“Poe,” warned Finn over his cup of cold caf. He slouched against the tiny galley, shoulder-to-shoulder with Rose, who seemed distressed by the infighting. Rey smiled at her and shot Finn a pointed look. He didn’t need to make enemies of friends just because she had.
“We all need to be on the same side,” she said under her breath.
“There’s no coming back from what he’s done,” said Poe.
“That will be all, Commander.”
Leia’s voice, as undeniable as gravity, silenced him. She pushed up from the table, edged past a grim-faced Lieutenant Connix, crossed the short distance to Rey…
And began to recede.
“Oh no,” Rey breathed, reaching out to Leia as the bond took her to him.
Motionless, Ben stared up at something huge. Wind ruffled his hair and cloak, and at first he didn’t seem to notice her. Bodies moved around him, though Rey couldn’t discern their forms or faces well enough to identify them. Were they wearing masks? The figures were dark, so it couldn’t have been white-armored troopers. The bond was showing her more now, but it wasn’t enough.
Where are you? she asked him.
Ben’s eyes snapped to hers, jolting her to the core, and she knew. She’d been there before.
Maz Kanata’s castle.
But…hadn’t that been destroyed the day she met Kylo Ren? She felt herself slip deeper into the bond, into something more than reality. A memory…
It was even more enormous than she’d remembered, the flying colors brighter, and suddenly she was inside it, whirling among cigarro smoke, loud music, and jostling patrons. Her eyes darted, trying to latch onto something or someone familiar among the myriad species, until she found him.
Ben, as a child.
Her awareness of him seemed to be simultaneously within him and without, for she felt the large hand that palmed his, and when she realized whose callused warmth made her feel so secure she nearly wept.
“Dad,” said Ben. “It’s too much here.”
He shook his head, the dark fringe wisping across his--or was it her?--vision until he looked up at Han Solo, sun-kissed and brown-haired, so tall next to Ben.
“This’ll just take a minute, kid,” Han said, his eyes scanning the place. He’d do anything for the cause, for Leia, and it didn’t matter what Ben wanted just now. The races were easier, quick money, in and out--but this?
Rey’s brows drew together and she shook her head. Was she hearing Han’s thoughts? Through Ben?
Then the press of hundreds of other voices nearly flattened her. Ben spoke, bringing her attention back to him, and she could scarcely comprehend how he stood there, as still and composed as he seemed to be.
“No, Dad, I’m serious.” The boy yanked his fingers from his father’s grasp and pressed both hands to his ears, but the voices wouldn’t stop. “There are too many.”
He heard every mind in the place, and underneath them all the purr of the only one who understood his power. It was deafening. Maddening.
“Ben!” Han’s face directly over his own. Had he fallen?
Now they were in a quiet space--the Falcon--while Ben shivered with arms wrapped around his knees in the co-pilot’s chair. Chewie, chuffing quietly, hovered behind him like a mother hen. His father scrubbed a hand over his face.
HE’S ASHAMED OF YOU, insisted the loudest voice. DISAPPOINTED. YOU’RE NOTHING LIKE HIM.
That’s a lie. Rey knew it, but had Ben?
“You okay there, kid?” Han asked. He reached over, rested a heavy hand on his son’s knee, not minding the wetness from his angry tears.
The boy shrugged, said nothing.
Done with her, the memory spat her out into now, still snagged in the bond with the adult Ben.
Rey turned to find him staring up at what remained of the battlements of Maz’s castle. With his gaze, Rey’s vision opened, and she finally saw the black-clad, masked warriors who scurried over the stonework like rats. Like the scavenger she’d once been. For a moment she tried to piece together who they were, what they were after.
But they didn’t matter--not to her, or him.
Ben, Snoke lied to you.
I know. His eyes roved every part of the ruined castle, his throat working, unable to speak, or think, any more than those two words.
And what did she know now? That he was here to hunt down Maz Kanata, to question her about the Resistance’s whereabouts.
“Don’t kill her,” said Rey. “Please.”
Ben’s eyes met hers again, and he was gone.
In his place Leia, quite as motionless as her son, stood in front of her.
3
Another failure.
Before he’d located her, the Resistance had gotten word to Kanata, and she’d flitted off-planet, taking a few allies with her. She’d unwisely left a handful behind--the “union,” they’d called themselves. The stragglers held no knowledge of Kanata’s destination, and they died quickly.
“How many starships?” the General asked back aboard the Finalizer.
“A handful of small freighters,” said Kylo, flanked by his Knights. “Untraceable. No more than jalopies, really.”
“Jalopies that nevertheless escaped your grasp,” began Hux as he advanced.
Kylo threw up a barrier; Hux drew up short and nearly stumbled. Oh, how he hated to be made to look a fool. But he needed reminders that the Supreme Leader would not be chastised, and the Knights were not his to command.
Although used to such displays, the other officers on deck shifted uncomfortably.
“Two of my Knights followed in a small craft from their base,” he said evenly. “But Kanata’s group scattered through the first asteroid field.”
Hux’s sneer became, if possible, even more pronounced. “Couldn’t you track them with the Force?”
An unbidden thought--That’s not how the Force works, Dad--even as his hand rose to silence Hux.
No no no no no.
He felt himself tugged away, to her. Now, of all times. He muttered an excuse and turned on his heel, barely aware of Hux gasping in his wake and his Knights dutifully trailing him as his mind attempted to make sense of the blend of his surroundings, pristine black and polished chrome overlaid on dinged-up durasteel.
Where are you?
“Leave me,” he said to the Knights, and they obeyed, peeling off into other corridors.
He continued down the wide hallway, feeling simultaneously cramped within the tiny pass-throughs of his father’s freighter, toward his own old bunk, with its flat mattress and thin blanket, upon which Rey sat with hands hanging limp between her knees.
He ducked into an alcove on the Finalizer and crouched at her feet on the Falcon.
What’s wrong?
He knew at once that Chewie and Poe were in the cockpit, and that she was supposed to be sleeping.
“Nothing,” she said, but I can’t stop thinking was what she really told him.
She’d bitten the skin around her thumbnail raw. He laid his hand over it, and she let him. A shudder rippled through her, along the Force, into him.
Again, he saw.
“How could you let them go?” the child Rey shouted at the same plethoric creature who'd held her arm in the previous memory. She was a little older now, a bit less afraid of the Crolute. Unkar Plutt, her mind revealed.
It was crowded and hot even in the shade of the outpost. Plutt turned his back on her to stow her day’s loot. “They weren’t your parents.”
Although the countertop was at a level with her forehead, Rey tucked away her portions, caught the edge with both hands and a boot, and hoisted herself onto it.
“How do you know? You keep saying you wouldn’t recognize them now! How could you send them off without letting me see them? What if--”
Plutt stalked back to her, pressed his hand flat against her scrawny chest, and pushed her off the stand into the dirt. “They said they were your parents. It wasn’t them.”
As she glared up at his broad back, her eyes welled with livid tears. She rose to her feet. “That’s all, then?”
“If anyone’s getting paid by the Hutts for that,” he muttered, “it’s gonna be me.”
The memory dissolved. Kylo sat in speechless silence with Rey.
It wasn’t them.
I know. She dragged her other hand across her face, perhaps to chase away the ghost tears. “It never dawned on me until now. Unkar mentioned the Hutts. Some…some strangers I never even saw wanted to sell me into slavery.” And I might’ve gone with them. Stupid.
Fury ignited within Kylo’s chest. “The Force had greater things in mind for you.” For us, he couldn’t help thinking, though he didn’t know what that meant yet.
Rey’s eyes caught his anger and held it tight. Her fingers twined into his.
“Would you have killed Maz? If you’d caught her?”
He shook his head slowly. He would have, but… You asked me.
The corners of her mouth lifted. A smile.
“Your mother--” she began.
The bond snapped shut.
Kylo fell back onto his haunches on the cold floor. He brought the hand she’d held to his lips and thought he smelled home.
4
“Have you two seen the General?”
Chewbacca vocalized a negative over his shoulder while Poe, who sipped caf in the co-pilot’s seat, said, “Nah, she hasn’t been up here. You get any winks?”
“All forty of them, thanks,” Rey lied. No sense in antagonizing the commander further.
Resting a hand on the back of Chewie’s seat, she drew closer to the transparisteel viewports. They’d finally come to the Mid Rim, and she felt exposed. The First Order had eyes everywhere.
As if she’d spoken aloud, the Wookiee expressed his own discomfort.
“Yeah, but Naboo’s got some friendlies,” said Poe. “Might be we could set up camp someplace out of the way. At least temporarily.”
Ignoring the suspicious look he shot her, Rey agreed. “We’ve got to stop running.”
An image flickered in her mind’s eye: Ben’s little smile last night when he’d confessed he wouldn’t have killed Maz Kanata because she’d asked him not to. How romantic. She winced and tried to shove away thoughts of how awkwardly his lips had quirked, as though he weren’t used to smiling anymore.
He’d looked so young.
She sighed and strode from the cockpit.
There were only so many spots in which Leia could disappear when she wanted a moment to herself. She tended not to stay in her and Han’s old quarters except for sleeping; too many memories, she’d admitted to Rey. Her favorite hiding place, for some reason, was the narrow corridor where the instrument panels stood. Rey had found her there a few hours after she’d fallen into the bond in front of everyone crammed into the hold, when she’d helplessly borne witness to Ben’s memories.
Of course, she’d gained information, which she’d promptly shared with General Organa, and that intel might well have saved Maz’s life.
Or she might’ve saved it herself, with her plea. Whatever this is, he can’t lie to me, she told herself, not for the first time. But best be wary.
Feeling strangely lonely, Rey went there now, to the tiny, hot corridor and sank to the grated flooring. After the bond had released her, Leia had murmured over the humming of these panels that she knew. She knew. She’d sensed Ben with her and understood they were together in some way. Everyone else who’d seen Rey talk to herself, or whatever it was she’d done and said--she shuddered to think--probably assumed she was having some sort of Force vision. Well, one benefit of being the last Jedi was that no one could really question anything.
“The less we tell the rest of them, the better,” Leia had whispered. It felt so intimate being here with her, as though, like the gravitational pull of a black hole, no secrets could escape this spot. “We don’t know yet how--how this will play out. We could use it.”
Ever the pragmatist. But her eyes told a different story.
“Mum’s the word,” Rey had whispered back.
She wanted to talk more with her about the bond, to try to make sense of it. There was no one else. Where was she?
Where are you?
Rey didn’t know if she or Ben asked it this time, but suddenly he was there, and to her horror she nearly sobbed with relief.
“Something’s wrong,” he said without preamble. “Where’s my mother?”
“What do you--”
“I sense her.”
Must he tower like that? She got to her feet. He still loomed. “She’s on board the Falcon with me.”
As he looked into her eyes, he found it. “You’re going to Naboo. Why?”
Get out of my head.
I can’t help this any more than you can.
“Kriff!” She stalked away, heart pounding. He followed. “Go away,” she shot over her shoulder.
“You know I can’t.”
“General Organa!” she shouted as she headed for the hold. She had to tell Leia the First Order would soon be privy to their destination, as soon as Ben told them. “Leia?”
Finn and Rose, in the middle of a heated game of dejarik, shook their heads when she asked if they’d seen the general. Turning toward the corridor to Leia’s quarters, she saw dark judgment etched in Ben’s eyes as he regarded Finn. She halted. Judgment, yes, but something else. Envy?
Hardly, Ben said to her.
She raised an eyebrow. Definitely.
Find my mother.
He stalked ahead without her, walking straight through BB-8, but Rey crouched down. A few bleeps and a whistle and she had her answer.
“He says he saw her go into the ‘fresher!” she called.
The little droid beeped his confusion.
“Oh, I’m talking to myself. Thanks, BB-8.”
Ben was already there with eyes shut, a hand on the closed door. She’s there, he told her. But…not there.
If you think I’m going in so you can check--
We’ll wait.
For what?
No reply. When he lowered himself to the floor to lean against the door, Rey felt she had no choice but to join him. Against her back she felt the sonic vibrations from within the ‘fresher, heard their constant humming, higher than the bestial rumble of the Falcon’s engines. Slowly she became aware of Ben’s surroundings: a room dimly lit by the stars visible through a wide viewport, a vast expanse of polished table with high-backed leather chairs tucked under it, and beyond his shoulder a shut door.
“What is this place?”
“Here?” He looked around as though just noticing it himself. “I’m not even sure. One of the meeting rooms.”
“Do people know? About us?”
For a long moment Ben looked at her and she heard the word us echoed in his thoughts. He shook his head. “I’ve been lucky so far.”
“I haven’t been.”
“I know.” He tilted his head to look up at the ‘fresher door, providing her with a sudden view of his neck under the angle of his jaw. How vulnerable he was there. And how--
She shut down the thought as quickly as she could, but his eyes darted to hers as though she’d just kissed his pale skin.
No, she told herself, and him.
Besides, there were more important things to figure out. He lowered his gaze to the hands in his lap. One thumb kneaded hard into his other palm, the only indication of his tension.
The point, she reminded herself. What is the point? She stared at Ben, trying to divine his intentions; but he guarded his thoughts carefully. He’d only just discovered--through her--their destination, and he hadn’t gone straight to the officers on his bridge. Why not?
When had he last seen his mother? Why should he want to see her now?
As Rey watched him sitting so motionless, she felt herself tugged deeper into him, dragged along a pulsating path towards long ago. A sunny day. The blast doors were open, the smell of spring in the air, and a youthful Ben on the cusp of something…
“You killed him.”
A split second of shock from what his mother had just told him, and he jogged after her. Mere days remained until he would go train with Uncle Luke, and she was only telling him this now?
“He had it coming,” Leia replied as she strode across the hangar toward the two x-wings that had mysteriously arrived in the night. Another secret delivery from faceless benefactors.
He couldn’t talk to her back, not now. Not about this. “Mom.”
She sighed and turned to face him. At twelve he was already taller than her, though to him it didn’t feel that way.
“You killed a Hutt,” he repeated. “And you never told me.”
There it was again, that small, secretive smile. Leia’s feelings surged at him, the humiliation and rage, the rush of unfettered power when Jabba died, that righteous sense of justice, and shot through all of it like silver thread: sweet, ugly revenge.
Could she understand the dark whisperings in him?
He swallowed.
“Mom,” he began, heart thundering in his chest. “I feel it, too.”
SHHH. YOUR POWER WILL NEVER GROW IF YOU SPEAK OF IT.
“Feel what?” she asked, brows drawing together.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed on. “There are times when I--”
His eyes flew open when Snoke’s presence disappeared, leaving a sudden vacuum, a space that only shame could fill. He was immediately unmoored. His mother stepped toward him, and he edged backward. Alone, alone. How many times could Ben disappoint his true Master before he abandoned him for good?
“Ben?” Leia saw him with her eyes, but they couldn’t see deep enough, not really.
“It’s nothing, Mom. Like you said, he had it coming.”
He turned and made his solitary way back to his room, feeling the approving darkness drape his shoulders once more like a mantle.
Ben.
Silence. Rey waited until his eyes rose to meet hers. Slowly, she threaded her fingers between his thumb and the palm of his other hand. He grasped them, hard.
What’s it like, now that he’s gone?
His mouth opened, but for a long moment the answer was unreachable. Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to wonder, much less to ask.
Eyes locked on hers, the soft exhalation of his reply was laden with all the weight of a scream, of long-unshed tears. “Relief.”
They’d drawn closer, both sitting on their heels, her knees between his, and he held her hand to his chest as though he couldn’t bear to let her go. She looked down at his, so strong and warm, at those impossibly long fingers enveloping her own. Beneath the thick wool of his tunic his body shuddered, and the warmth of his sigh caressed her lips. Rey traced his knuckles, dragged her gaze back to his eyes again…
Together they fell into the vision.
Standing side by side, in hellfire, or in sunlight, or maybe it was the cold vastness of space; no, they languished in a prison cell, no, they danced across a meadow of green grass, no, they watched children climbing a tree; together, they commanded the destruction of planets, or battled the First Order, or deliberated with a new Senate, or faced execution before billions on the HoloNet; together, they sowed seeds in a garden; together they hid from everyone and war destroyed everything, or peace came in its own time; together in a grave, gilded or unmarked, side by side, forever, in all possibilities.
Rey wept. Ben trembled.
I feel it, she told him, and it felt like release.
He kissed her.
The vision fled, as did their surroundings, and the parsecs that separated them. There was only him, his lips on hers, his hands cradling her face. Only her, her fingers threaded through his hair, her body arching toward his.
Around them space, nothingness, everything, everyone. The Force.
A sound, all too ordinary, made them turn their heads as the ‘fresher door slid open.
Framed in the entrance stood Leia in her bathrobe, mouth agape, hair loose and wild from her shower. She dropped her comb. It clattered on the tile.
Ben rose at once.
The moment shattered, Rey picked up the comb and accepted Ben’s hand to help her to her feet.
“You came back,” Leia breathed, her eyes seeming to rake over him, drinking in his features.
Could she see Ben? Luke had, in the hut, when they’d touched hands. Rey held his hand now. Was it her physical contact with him that made him visible to others? Or had Leia glimpsed him during Rey’s last contact through the bond?
For a moment Ben swayed as though he would go to her. Then he drew himself up. “Abandon your plan,” he said in a clip.
Leia narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, I know all about it,” he went on quickly, as though he expected the bond to shut him out at any second. “I feel you here with me already. If you come alone to negotiate with the First Order, you’ll die.”
“On your orders?” she challenged.
A pause. Then more gently, “Of course not.”
“Aren’t you the Supreme Leader?” Satisfied by his glower, she raised her eyebrows. “Then you’d best come here instead.”
He flinched.
“Hardball,” she added with a wink.
“Leia,” said Rey, finding her voice at last, “this is madness.”
“What other choice do we have?” Leia spoke to Rey, but her eyes never strayed from her son. “There’s nothing left. All we have is us. And I figure that’s enough. Don’t you, Ben?”
“If you think I’m going to abandon everything I’ve worked for--”
“Everything you’ve worked for?” said Rey, starting to pull her hand from his.
But he wouldn’t let go. His head whipped toward her, and when he found her thoughts, the anger drained from him. He’d thought himself a willing puppet, but Snoke had tugged the strings, hadn’t he? Whose plan was it, any of it, after all?
He swallowed, his eyes pleading with her. What you ask is too much. The things I’ve done--
“Come home,” said Leia.
He turned toward his mother, biting down on his reply…and then he was gone. Rey’s hand twitched, wanting his warmth back at once.
“Damn it,” Leia whispered. She shook her head, sagged against the doorway.
Awkwardly, Rey handed her back the comb. Leia stared at it for a long while, then raised shimmering eyes to the spot where Ben had stood.
“That always happens. The--the disappearing thing,” Rey managed at length. “Don’t take it personally.”
Leia’s guffaw filled the corridor until the tears she’d been holding back coursed down her cheeks.
5
Kylo never got around to giving the order to converge on Naboo; anyhow, the rebels changed course, so in the end it didn’t matter.
Over the next day and a half, his thoughts circled back and back again to his mother. She hadn’t made him any sort of offer, hadn’t outlined the terms of surrender--hers or his--or implied what their negotiations would entail. Come home, she’d said, and it had sounded so simple. Simpler than when his father had offered him the same choice. What had changed?
After the final evening meeting--a strategy session with Hux, his officers, and Kylo’s Knights, during which Kylo listened little and spoke less--he couldn’t reach the privacy of his quarters fast enough.
Did it matter what he did? The vision had made it clear: he and Rey were together, no matter the outcome, whatever choices they made, or faced. Did it make a bit of difference, what they wanted?
What did he want?
His lips crushing hers, her pelvis straining toward his.
He leaned against the shut door, groaned aloud, tugged his hair by the roots.
But he did, he wanted her, didn’t care anymore who stood at whose side, or for what reason.
No, he did care. Had always cared. And that was his entire problem. Let the past die, he’d told her.
But whose past? Ben’s, or Kylo’s?
With a growl he undressed, tossed his underthings in the hamper, hung his outer garments neatly in the polished wood armoire beside his bed. Then he stepped into the shower, welcoming the steam that steadied his breathing and the heat that soothed tension in his shoulders and back. But all the while, his thoughts spiraled and ascended, over and over again, until the water grew cold.
After he toweled off, he combed his hair, still so deep in thought that he barely felt the duraplast teeth as they pulled across his scalp. He stilled, staring at himself in the mirror.
A comb. What a strange thing to remind him of his mother, and now he would never not think of her whenever he used it.
He placed it gently on the countertop.
Drawing on his sleep pants, he slipped into bed and meditated until he fell asleep…
And dreamed of Ahch-To.
Uncle Luke was there, framed by ocean spray at the top of a rise, and somehow Ben wasn’t angry with him. He went and sat at his feet, like in the old days, but this time Luke sat with him.
“You broke my lightsaber,” his former Master said.
Ben nodded. “We did.”
“How symbolic.” His beard twitched around a wry smile. Luke looked so much older than he remembered; yet his eyes were warm and kind.
A laugh bubbled from Ben’s throat, and it felt natural. It felt right.
He followed Luke’s gaze outward, toward the setting suns. Were there two here?
“The right choice is often the hardest,” his Master said.
It was nighttime before Ben replied. “I’ve never chosen right.”
They sat in silence as the stars rotated overhead, until the first glimmer of morning illuminated the horizon.
“It’s a long life, Ben.”
When he looked, his Master was gone.
Movement up the hill caught Ben’s eye, and he stood. Under rosy dawn light, diminutive creatures took turns beating something dark and wet against a smooth rock, crushing it with large pestles, shoveling it into wagons and carrying it away. They sang to keep the rhythm, and as he approached he saw the fishlike beings were dressed as though they were part of a religious order. They’d harvested seaweed from the ocean, mixed it with fish trimmings and manure, and beat it into the rich, pungent substance he saw in the wheelbarrows.
“Soil,” said Rey, coming to stand next to him.
Kylo cracked his eyes and saw his own bedroom, the dim light of his chrono on the bedside table. So he wasn’t dreaming anymore. He was in the bond, partaking of Rey’s memories.
“They’re making soil,” she told him as they watched her memory together. Droplets of salt spray dotted her cheeks. “There was no fertile land here, so they had to create it themselves from what they had. At first I thought all of this was ritual--” She gestured to the rhythmic pounding, the swaying and singing. “--but it’s quite functional. They use the soil to grow food. Over millennia, they’ve made this island a better place.”
How symbolic.
Don’t be negative.
I’m not.
Kylo opened his eyes wider and blinked. Raked a hand over his face. Glanced at the chrono; it wasn’t time to rise yet. When he turned his head toward the other pillow, Rey was still there, under his sheets, eyes closed as though she slept.
He shifted to face her. “Is it nighttime there?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He let himself drift toward her side of the galaxy, felt the lumpy bunk of his childhood, smelled the grease of the Falcon, the scent of Rey’s hair.
She wore a tank top with no arm wrappings. The shoulder wound she’d sustained when they’d battled the Praetorian Guards, healed by a bacta patch, shone faintly under the blue light of his room, so far away. He ran his fingertips along the tender skin, danced from freckle to freckle, delighting in seeing gooseflesh rise in response.
Was this how it was between them now?
“The Caretakers could’ve left Ahch-To, you know,” she murmured, eyes still closed. “But they were stubborn.”
He chuckled. “They must’ve loved you.”
She opened her eyes, and his heart hammered. Ben.
Yes.
It matters. What we choose, it does matter. We can choose our future.
He knew it to be true, and yet--
Before he could voice an objection, Rey raised up on her elbows. Her hair hung loose over his face as she kissed him, slowly, deeply, and his whole body sang with longing, the suffering only sweetening when she settled atop him. He cursed his pants and her underwear, even the bond itself, for not giving him every part of her at once. But the skin of her lower back was warm under his hands, her body hot and pliant as he ground into her and she moved against him, her breath shuddering against his lips.
The sensation slackened. Rey sat up, palms pressing against his bare chest, and stared into his eyes as though she could will him to remain where he was.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, gripping her hips tight to him--but the bond was slipping.
“Come quick. Your mother’s boarding a shuttle tomorrow.”
Tell her to stay put.
6
Rey watched from the corner of the hold as Leia informed the Resistance of her plan to send Rey to “capture” someone who would be a key player in the defeat of the First Order. The rebels would take refuge in the neutral zone on Barab I while Rey took the Falcon and intercepted this person of interest. Leia deflected all questions as to the identity of the turncoat--which was for the best, as even Rey wasn’t certain that this technically counted as defection.
If Ben even showed up.
How could Leia be so sanguine about it all? This was the reclamation of her son. Had anyone here known Ben Solo without a mask, when he was no one more than Leia’s and Han’s little boy? Poe, perhaps? Lieutenant Connix? Certainly Chewbacca, and Leia hadn’t even told him what they planned.
Perhaps the general simply wanted to avoid another mutiny. There were too few rebels left; they couldn’t afford to be divided. Act now, negotiate later.
“One decisive action,” she’d told Rey this morning in the privacy of the instrument panel corridor. “One move could clean up this whole mess.”
But this was more than a war maneuver, and Leia knew it.
Rey certainly did. After the bond had ripped her from his bed, loneliness had crested over her until she thought she’d drown. She wanted the heat of his body, wanted to feel the bumps of his scars and the flexion of his muscles. She needed his arms to crush her to him, his tongue to wind against hers and silence her racing thoughts. There had to be more than what she could feel through their connection. She’d replayed their kisses and teased them further in her imagination, pictured his body beneath her as she took him inside her, saw in his glistening eyes how desperately he wanted her.
How he loved her.
As the voices pitched and swelled in the hold, Rey closed her eyes. The bond had drawn them together. Was it inevitable that they should love each other, too? Perhaps not…but they did.
Act now, negotiate later.
Rey extracted herself from the meeting, her feet carrying her again to the instrument panel corridor. She pressed her forehead into the warm buzz of the metal and tried to still her thoughts. Maybe he wouldn’t come after all.
Of course I’m coming.
Ben leaned against the panel next to her, arms folded across his torso as though he’d been waiting for her.
“When my mother gets an idea,” he said, “she’s like a Dorax dog who’s caught the scent of prey. Tell me where, so she doesn’t do anything rash.”
“I’ll bring you to her. Meet me in three days.” Rey gave him the coordinates.
He shook his head. “It’s too close to our fleet.”
“We don’t want to risk them tracking you. I have to take you aboard and jump.”
“I don’t like it.”
She crossed her arms, mirroring his position. “You don’t think we can take them? You and I?”
His lips quirked again, this time in a real smile, his imperfect teeth gleaming like a tusk cat’s.
The low drone of the engines underscored the stillness between them.
“Ben,” she whispered. “Are you coming home?”
His smile faded. When he spoke, it was in his usual matter-of-fact tone. “I’m coming to you.”
He stepped closer, rested a hand heavily on her hip until her arms unfolded. Her fingers trailed upward along his chest, and he stooped so she could reach to cradle his jaw.
What are we doing? she asked, as if he’d have any idea himself. There was no suspicion between them now. The bond had opened them both, wider than she’d ever thought, certainly deeper than he could’ve dreamed. No secrets, no mistrust, no malevolence. She could no more harm him than he could her.
She traced the scar on his cheek. Even then, before she knew all of this, she couldn’t kill him.
Do you think we have a choice? he replied.
We always have a choice.
Then I choose you.
7
Desertion should have felt like one more impulsive, reckless decision in a lifetime of them, but it hadn’t. Not to say that leaving the Finalizer had been easy--far from it. Turning his back on the only existence he’d known for most of his adult life had felt like stepping into the void.
And yet, for the first time in as long as he could remember, it felt as though he’d chosen right.
He’d scattered his Knights across the galaxy, giving each one a “lead” on the Resistance’s possible whereabouts; they’d figure out soon enough--or at least when the trails ran dry--that he’d released them from their duties. Hopefully none would return to the First Order. He’d told them they wouldn’t need their masks, and after they departed he destroyed each helmet with his lightsaber.
Then he’d found General Hux skulking about on the bridge in his typical uptight manner, so like his own that it never failed to make his teeth grind. Hux had barely suppressed his glee when Kylo had informed him he was about to embark on his own top secret mission. He’d dipped briefly into the general’s manic thoughts and caught shreds of yet another germinating plot: laserwire across a doorway, poison in a carafe of water, some malleable Knight’s betrayal of his Master. Quite a welcome home party.
Not that Kylo would ever be going back. He wasn’t sure where home was, or had ever been, but it wasn’t here.
Nor was his destiny.
A thrill coursed through him, now that he no longer had reason to deny it.
Punching in the coordinates, Kylo sank back in the seat of the nimble shuttle he’d taken from the jumble of confiscated starships--First Order property now, whatever it once had been, as were the loose civilian clothes he’d scavenged from storage. After disabling the tracking device, he looked around at the glow of lights along the panels. When the time came, he would shed this vessel like a cloak. A ship’s a ship, kid.
But now he moved toward something instead of merely away from something else. For so long, fleeing had felt like arriving, like accomplishment. What, in all these years, had he accomplished of his own desires?
Casting out his senses to make certain no one followed, he took a circuitous route just to be safe. He’d be with her again, tomorrow. He considered stopping off on sparsely-populated Daluuj for an anonymous drink in a cantina to kill some time, but that felt like possibly the strangest thing he could ever do. Perhaps one day he’d relax like a normal person, like a man who could sling back a drink in a dive bar. Someday, when all this was over, he could pretend to be just another war veteran with demons never to be discussed.
But with Rey beside him.
Seconds ticked into minutes, which grew into hours, and finally became the next day. Soon the red star of the Ord Lonesome system shone brightly into the viewports, and he settled where Rey had told him, in the darkness behind the moon of Veritura II.
Where are you?
I’m here.
The Falcon’s approach felt like his mother’s footsteps in the night, a hand on his forehead, a tumbler of water beside his bunk. In his last moments of solitude, Ben allowed himself a brief sob, and then he docked the shuttle and boarded.
A ship was a ship, true enough. But this one, Ben? His father’s laugh, something between a scoff and a chuckle. She ain’t goin’ anywhere.
Within, Rey stood as still as a beacon, waiting for him to find his way to her.