You'll Be the One to Turn

by postedbygaslight

Summary:

This work arose from two mirrored one-shots I wrote on Tumblr, one from Rey's perspective, and one from Kylo/Ben's. Then I started getting feedback, and now it's become a full-fledged fic.

Several months have passed since the Battle of Crait, and Rey of Jakku and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren have continued to haunt each other, appearing at random to each other throughout their days and nights. But the connection is unstable, and longing and loneliness start to overwhelm other concerns.

Chapter 1: Rey

Maybe it’s because she sees him everywhere.

In the moments between meditating, between menial tasks and fending off First Order raids. In the moments between training, between poring over the inscrutable texts she took from the temple on Ahch-To and puzzling over how to repair her lightsaber. In the moments between helping Rose modify the power flow from the main generators, between Finn showing her how to handle a blaster and Poe giving her pointers on X-Wing aerodynamics— not that she plans on piloting anything other than the Falcon; but it keeps her busy.

She needs to keep busy.

She mostly avoids Leia, who she knows is Force sensitive, and who could help her understand all this, in more ways than one. But she’s frightened she won’t be able to close her mind. Leia’s his mother, after all, and Rey can feel that she thinks of him often. And it’s times like that when the familiar tickle begins at the base of her skull, and her heart quickens and her breath catches, and she wants so badly to just close her eyes and not look at him. But she always looks. And for long moments she loses herself in his gaze, which should be baleful and hard and filled with anger, but never is.

She doesn’t avoid Chewie, who knew him as well as anyone, who knew what she intended when she climbed into that escape pod. Chewie, who had days earlier tried to kill him, but who had also nodded assent, and never questioned her— even when she returned from the Supremacy bruised and bleeding and hurt in other ways. They’d never once spoken of it, not in the days just after, not in the months since. Never in the hours spent coaxing a little more fuel efficiency out of the Falcon, never in the interminable struggle to understand the tripartite logic games presented by the freighter’s central computer, and certainly never in front of the others. He’s never spoken about that day, not to anyone, at least not that she knows. It’s a comfort to know it’s unlikely anyone could ever coax information from a Wookiee that he didn’t want to volunteer.

She goes to sleep in the Falcon every night. She’s been offered quarters in the base, but always defers to wanting others to have more room. She’s used to being alone, and the Falcon is as close to a home she’s had since the AT-AT half buried in the Goezon flats back on Jakku. She needs the quiet to sleep. That’s what she says, and what she tells herself. But maybe it’s because sometimes, when the gentle thrum of the idle engines becomes an ambient humming, and the half-light of the emergency lighting settles into something resembling the Ahch-To twilight, she opens her eyes and he’s there. It never lasts more than a few minutes, and they never speak. But she finds herself hoping it will happen, and always feels relief when it does.

You’re not alone.

It’s in these stolen moments, deep in the night of some alien sky, that she finds herself wishing for his voice, molten and soft and hungry, to say her name again. She thought he would have tried long ago, but he never says a word. It takes all the strength she has not to lose her composure and get swept away by the torrent of confused emotions that always surges through her, especially in the night, when there isn’t anything between them but the space of a galaxy— untold light years; the span of mere inches. It isn’t until the connection fades that she allows herself to cry, and when the tears come they flow freely, hot and salty on her cheeks, cold and slick on her pillow, and that’s how sleep often finds her.

In dreams, it’s different. Sometimes she fights him, and they’re back in the forest on Starkiller, sabers crashing together in brilliant flashes. She savors these dreams, lost in the bloodbeat of combat, the rhythm of the dance they’ve danced so many times before. Sometimes they’re fighting together, amidst the flames of Snoke’s throne room, red-armored praetorians emerging in an unending procession from behind the crimson curtain.

And there are the other dreams. The ones where she kills him. The ones where he kills her. The ones where they touch skin-to-skin, and all is silence and wanting, and these are the dreams in which she feels the overwhelming need to fall into him, to let him consume her, and to drink deeply from whatever abyss she finds on the other side. But they all end the same way; she awakes with a start, lost and empty, with only the dull ache of unfulfilled desire to welcome her to another day.

Maybe it’s because she can’t avoid talking about him. There are meetings— there are always meetings— and she has to be there. To provide wisdom. To share insight. To be the beacon of hope they need her to be. To sit and listen to them call him by that other name, the name that catches like bile in her throat. And she knows how it looks. How they all shoot her glances of concern. How they whisper, while their thoughts are so loud. How Finn has earnestly and gently asked her again and again if she wants to talk about what happened on Starkiller, what happened on the Supremacy.

What did he do to you?

What, indeed.

Maybe it’s because she can’t let go. It’s ironic, she often thinks, remembering his sudden, furious entreaty that she let go of the past, that she’s now frozen in place because she can’t let go of the future. One that could be; one that is, if only in her mind. She knows that the Force only showed her the potential of a future— just the shape, but solid and clear— but she can’t help but be overtaken by it again and again. Every time she tries to see it, really see it, she’s met by a yawning emptiness, and she always retreats from it. Because it feels like if she were to push forward, to compel the Force to show her what she wants to see, that she would slip into that unknowable ocean of shapeless gray, forever trapped between two unreachable shores.

She tries to take solace in the peace she found in the moments after the Supremacy was torn apart, standing over his unconscious body, resolving to let be what would be. It seemed easy then, embracing the epiphany that the future existed in branching paths, but living the reality was proving more difficult every day. The clarity with which she now understands Luke’s warning— This is not going to go the way you think— has improved her perception of the Force, but does little to help with the uneasy feeling of wrongness that seems to invade her every move.

She’s thought about finding young people like her, other Force sensitives, and teaching them. It feels like a mandate she’s destined to pursue. But she doesn’t know where to begin, or what she would tell them, or how to find them without alerting the First Order to their presence. She’s meditated about it, reaching out with her feelings in quiet moments, but always finds a locked door, something she feels should open, could open, if only—

Maybe it’s because she’s spent enough time waiting. All those days of heat and thirst and desperation, all those nights of cold and hunger, whispering soft prayers into the darkness begging for sleep. All that time, scratched in jagged silver-white streaks on the walls of her AT-AT, the only home she’d ever had. Time spent in certainty that someone was coming, that it was all an awful mistake, that she was loved and wanted, that some desperate fate had kept her parents from returning. It had been a comforting illusion, and one that probably had kept her alive, but an illusion all the same. No one was coming. She was truly alone. Or, she had been until—

She tries to find comfort in her friends. She smiles. She laughs. She finds a way to hide the turmoil just beneath the surface. She makes small talk and carries on. Her heightened senses pick up on the shape of intent, and the gradual slopes and bends of emotion in others. She sees it as Finn and Rose grow closer, and their awkward, hurried kisses slowly change to become something deeper. She sees it in the way Lieutenant Connix’s eyes linger on Poe for half-seconds longer than they ought to, and can feel the anxious, unhappy pining as though she were wading through water struck by a sudden chill. She wonders whether it would be her place to tell the lovestruck lieutenant that Poe would reciprocate— he would surely take her to bed. But she wonders if it would also be her place to tell Connix that their affections would be unbalanced, and that the pilot-turned-General would likely never be as devoted to her as she to him. In the end, she just observes, and says nothing.

She’s good at leading. It suits her. She leads supply runs and scouting missions and surveillance operations, always watching and hiding and running, moving to the next base, the next target, the next supply cache. But the uneasiness is there, always building. And it seems, too, like he’s always there, just beside her, and she can feel his guilt and his longing as though they were her own. And there’s the way his eyes meet hers. And the way she feels both weak and strong when he’s there. And the way she seems to always wonder where he is, what he’s doing, if he thinks of her the way she thinks of him.

Maybe that’s why she does it. Maybe that’s why she spends hours in the training yard that afternoon, pushing herself to the limits of exhaustion, channeling the Force through all her feelings, letting her anger out on the practice droids she modified just for this purpose. Maybe it’s why she keeps going, barely stopping for breath, until she feels as though her body has dissipated into a cloud of heat and light, and she begins to lose the ability to discern where her body ends and the air begins. Maybe it’s why when the cold grip of the darkness tugs at her senses, she takes hold of it and welcomes it like an old friend.

When she wakes up in the med bay, it’s to concerned faces and hard questions. She blames stress and the weight of responsibility. Leia understands that, deeply, intrinsically. But there’s a grim concern that colors her expression, and Rey wonders just how much she suspects. She begs off treatment, but accepts the dose of painkillers for her aching muscles and her throbbing head. It takes longer than she would have preferred to convince Finn to let her go back to the Falcon on her own, and then it’s only because Rose arrives and tells him, sweetly but firmly, to leave well enough alone.

She hates that everyone is looking at her like some fragile thing, like some precious glass bauble set at any moment to shatter. But why shouldn’t they worry? She’s the last Jedi, inheritor of the legacy of a thousand generations, and two dozen people just watched her pass out from heat exhaustion. Like a common recruit.

When she gets back to the Falcon, she finds it quiet. She reassures Artoo that she’s fine, and suggests he plug in at the base for the night. She just needs to be alone, she insists. The droid, who is older than she is by fifty years, and who she’s sure has seen more than she could even imagine, beeps disapproval, but glides on down the ramp all the same. She closes the hatch, engages the flight lock, and sets all systems to stand-by.

It’s nearly an hour later when she finds herself sitting alone in the room she’s claimed as hers, staring blankly into the middle distance, all of her perception blending into a flowing loom of energies: dark and light and the dull impression of feelings, ancient and untethered, she can scarcely comprehend. There’s a depthless sense of wonder and terror that accompanies these initial moments of meditation: gliding along the fabric of the Living Force, its ever-changing warp and weft carrying her, cradling her, bringing her to a place of peace and clarity, however briefly.

She takes an unsteady breath and closes her eyes, reaching out with all the things she hasn’t allowed herself to acknowledge, all the things she no longer has the strength to cry about— but if that’s so, then why does she suddenly feel the hot sting of tears gathering behind her closed lids?

Maybe it’s because she knows what she has to do. Maybe it’s because what is destined and what she wants are not different things. But maybe, just maybe, it’s because it’s time. She gathers what courage she has, and whispers to the darkness:

“Ben...”

And opens her eyes.

Chapter 2: Kylo

It has to be because he deserves it.

That’s the thing about anguish. And anger. And fear. Bright candles in the chasm. Holding off the dark until panic runs its course and the inky cold draws in to suffocate. Useless. Weak. He is stronger than this. He has made himself stronger than this. He cannot, will not, surrender to the sentiment that destroyed his grandfather. The heat-warped mask he keeps on the altar in his chambers glares at him in silent rebuke. Sentiment. Compassion. It has made him weak.

He cannot afford to be weak.

But the punishment comes often. In training. In council. In meditation. In every meaningless moment and every crucial briefing. The electric crackle. The muting of outside world. Breathing. Heartbeats. Her dark eyes. And the smoothness of her skin. And the way her chestnut hair lies on her neck and shoulders. And the way she looks at him without fear or anger. And the way he wants to hate her. The way he needs to hate her.

The days are interminable. Mirrored floors and durasteel. Hux haunting his steps. When Snoke called him a rabid cur, it wasn’t in jest. Not a week passes without Hux asking questions about Snoke’s death, about the girl. Why she was there, what happened; sequence of events; how. Weakness, he thinks. The same weakness that greeted him as he woke sensing his own death at Hux’s hands. Kylo should have killed him then. But maybe it’s fitting that Hux survived when Phasma didn’t. Maybe it’s fitting, too, that Kylo should have died that day, but somehow lived. She should have killed him.

He spends more time in seclusion as the weeks and months go by. He keeps his private chambers, his ascetic trappings, and balks at the notion of moving to Snoke’s cabin. He knows his master never used those rooms. Let them be a mausoleum. That’s what he tells the ship’s steward. It’s what he tells himself. But the truth is he couldn’t imagine staying in those rooms, because sometimes, as he lies in bed on the ragged edge of sleep, he’ll open his eyes to see her there. Her breathing always quickens. But so does his. And he lets himself drown in her soft, sad eyes. She never says anything. She doesn’t have to.

It isn’t too late.

He’s never more calm than in those moments, a placid reprieve from the constant roil of emotions that seize him when she’s gone. He’s wanted to say something, anything, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He’s terrified she’ll slam the connection shut, like she did on Crait. He’s terrified he’ll break whatever spell the Force has visited upon them, that she’ll fade from his sight, and like so much he’s cherished, she’ll be lost to him forever. As it is, these moments are fleeting, and all too soon, she’s gone, and the darkness encloses him once more.

He rarely sleeps afterward. He rarely sleeps at all. But when he does, he dreams. He dreams of fighting her in the forest, and she is fury and bared teeth, and each crash of their sabers is like the roar of a caged beast. He dreams of fighting beside her, and she is nature made flesh, something ancient and primal, and he can feel her exhilaration, her ferocity, and it trembles through him in shuddering waves as he is driven to his own savage impulses.

She’s in his nightmares, and he’s now well acquainted with the sickening thrill of her saber plunging into him, his spellbound horror as his saber plunges into her. But there are other dreams. Quiet dreams. The brush of fingertips. Subtle movements. Soft breaths. The smell of her skin. And it’s these dreams where he wants her to open his veins and let him sink into her warmth and surrender to her in every way a man can surrender. Waking is always the same: half-hard, balls aching, his body and mind raw and unrested.

It has to be because they’re always talking about her. The Jedi girl. The assassin. The murderess. Hux brings it up in council meetings and military briefings, and his officers have taken to suggesting elaborate means of execution for her. He can feel their eyes on him, and the way they think about it. Every time they say her name, a shadow crosses his face, and Hux has made a point to emphasize that this criminal’s capture is a matter of the Supreme Leader’s honor: the girl who twice struck down Kylo Ren must be brought to justice. His face twists in a scowl, and it’s impossible for them to know that his barely contained rage is not due to his wounded pride, but at the notion that he’d ever allow any of them to touch her.

Supreme Leader, it would be helpful to know how exactly she managed to subdue you.

Wouldn’t it just.

It has to be because he is a fool. He had thought she understood. He had deceived himself, and he is paying the price for it. When they touched through the Force, he was shown the breadth and depth of her loneliness, and the careless architects of her misery. He saw them— two ragged cretins haggling with an obese, flat-nosed junk dealer. A short distance away, a girl of five, her hair pulled into three tight buns. A few credits exchanged hands. The two adults left while the girl was distracted, idly playing with a scavenged power coupling. He saw her that night sobbing herself to sleep. He saw her at seven, treating her own wounds in the wreckage of a Star Destroyer. He saw her at ten, teaching herself droid languages so she would have someone to talk to. He saw her parents in burial shrouds, tossed into a communal grave far from Niima Outpost. He had been so sure if she could only accept the truth— but no. He was alone, attended only by memory.

And lately, the memories come more often. The voice, subtle and ever-present, whispering to him in quiet moments as a boy. Alone in his bed, restless and exhausted, the voice would calmly tell him things, true things, things that it couldn’t have known. That same voice telling him of his parents’ fear of him. That same voice telling him his parents would send him away. That same voice warning him that his uncle would seek to rid himself of anyone perceived to have greater power than the legendary Luke Skywalker. And that same voice telling him to aspire to the greatness of his grandfather. And to rid his pain through purity of vision. And to murder his father. And to kill her.

The voice is gone now. Dead, along with its owner. But in its absence is a deafening silence, and there remains nothing to dampen his guilt, or to assuage the emptiness that threatens to eat him alive. He remembers Snoke’s lessons. The lightning. The mind probes. Each exercise meant to expose weakness, chisel away the brittle pieces, to break the frightened boy who had failed at everything and replace him with something stronger. None of that helped when he woke in the throne room to find she had left him; it offered only panic, anger, isolation. And then he’d seen Luke. With that lightsaber. And the truth he’d known in that moment came into sharp relief: she’d betrayed him. She’d run back to Luke. Given him the family saber. To finish the job.

Maybe Luke should have killed him that night in his room. Maybe he should have let it happen. Everything had devolved into chaos. He had the help of friends then. Those days seem like a distant dream. He remembers the way Snoke would call him “master of the Knights of Ren,” long after such a thing existed. The Seven Light, as they’d called themselves at the training temple, had long since been reduced to one. They were all dead, all killed in duels. Another of Snoke’s lessons. Kylo kept their ashes. To remember them. To honor them. And like the remains of his father, that memory and honor passed into the fire that once was Starkiller Base. In the cold light of the training room, his rage flows hot and unceasing, and it feels as though he too will pass into fire, consumed by ghosts of his own making. In the red tinged dark of his quarters, the depth of loss is too much to bear, and when such despair takes him, he closes his eyes, and wonders if he can dare to hope—

It has to be because to hope is to suffer. His father had hoped. His mother, too. They were rewarded with a son who broke them both. And for what? Snoke. Cruel and lecherous and decrepit. Kylo had so craved Snoke’s approval, the praise that had come from someone so wise and powerful, the validation of legacy and revealed truths. He sits at his workbench, his lightsaber half deconstructed, and glimpses the kyber crystal in the focusing chamber, a jagged crack scored deep through its center. His hatred for Snoke comes suddenly and it crashes in waves through the Force, bending and twisting around him like an open wound. The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader.

The whispers are everywhere. He can feel them like claws sinking in beneath his skull. Hux has been plotting since the Battle of Crait, moving pieces, waiting to strike. The officers pass him fearfully. Every face is distorted by nervous tension. He hasn’t even tried to divine what Hux could be planning. Ever since he knelt in the gloom of the Crait mine, watching the illusion of his father’s sabacc dice disappear in his hand, the Force had been clouded and opaque. And the darkest part of him hopes for catastrophe.

He hates ruling. He hates the artifice. He hates the politicking and the haggling and the delegation. But most of all, he hates the atrophy of it all, the pointlessness of it. He was built for war. The crunch of broken concrete. The odor of plasma and cordite. The drumbeat of blood pounding in his ears. Burning flesh. Melted plastene. The spray of embers from his blade. Becoming the monster he always feared. But even that has lost all meaning, because it feels like she’s everywhere and nowhere, forever a part of him, but itching like a phantom limb. He feels her loneliness, and it amplifies his own. And there’s the way he’s always looking for her. And the way she breaks him and makes him whole. And the way she’s infected every part of him, and how he can’t bear the thought of being cured.

It has to be the reason he leaves the training room in his undershirt, bare-armed and slicked with sweat, the dark fire of purpose in his eyes. It has to be why he shoulders his way into Snoke’s private cabin, his saber hilt in his hand. It has to explain why he stands in the austere chambers, looking at a bed in which no one has ever slept, chairs in which no one has ever sat, and dozens of glass cases, each containing some relic of the Sith Empire, some artifact of Emperor Palpatine’s alchemical experiments, and countless other minutiae: mementos of pain and domination and reasonless suffering. And it absolutely must be why when Kylo sees that Snoke actually had a bust of himself on display, dignified and noble and absent of deformities, that a mirthless laugh escapes him, full-throated and lunatic, before collapsing into a primitive, guttural roar.

He ignites the blade and smashes through the glass, cutting Snoke’s bust in half. He hacks at the charred stone, and he’s still screaming. Panting and wild-eyed, he crashes against the display cases, sending the priceless antiquities scattering, showering himself in a spray of glass splinters. He brings the saber down on every surface he can find. Smoke and embers swirl in the air. He tears the bed apart. The sheets smolder and catch fire. And when the emergency sprinklers finally engage, he stands amidst the ruin, chest heaving, a steady flow of blood dripping down his arm. He stays there, looking at the smoking rubble that was Snoke’s bust, water streaming over his shoulders, long tendrils of steam curling from the crackling ripple of his saber blade.

No one approaches him as he walks the halls of the Finalizer. He can feel the stares of the officers and the crew members. The stormtroopers pay less heed to him. They’ve seen the worst of him, and they’ve come to expect it. He looks every bit the part of a mad king, stalking the corridors half dressed, soaked to the bone, covered in soot and blood, his long black hair swept over his eyes in blade-like strings. Not a single word is said as he passes, not when he enters the turbolift, not when he ignores the security checkpoint, not when he finally enters his chambers, and seals the door from the inside.

It’s dark. It’s always dark. When he was a padawan, he would try to find peace through meditation. Snoke’s poisonous murmurs were there to greet him. When he embraced the Dark Side, he found no relief. Mediation in the coldness of the void is not about alleviating pain, but utilizing it. He recognizes that now it could be different, that without Snoke’s toxins in him, he could find comfort in the Light, but he can’t remember how. He has never been at peace. Except with her, briefly, for the span of a few moments.

His breath is shallow and raspy as he sinks to the floor, leaning against the wall. He closes his eyes, and sees his father’s face, bathed in streaks of red, promising to do anything for him. He sees his mother’s hair, braided long and delicate down her back in the sun room of their home on Chandrila. He sees Luke, and the pain and regret in his eyes, and puzzles what it was he was meant to learn on Crait. Luke had died. His father had died. His mother had lost her husband. Her brother. Her son.

And something in him breaks. For the first time since he was a boy, he weeps, and the tears sting in his eyes like acid. And he decides it doesn’t have to be because of anything. It doesn’t have to be his destiny or his purpose or his legacy. It doesn’t have to be something he can see or feel. It has to be because he lets go; it has to be because he has hope. And so he gathers what courage he has and reaches out with his feelings.

Rey.

And opens his eyes.

Chapter 3: Communion

It takes a moment to process. She had just opened her eyes, half-expecting her plea to the Force to go unanswered. But he’s there, leaning against the wall, not three feet away from where she sits cross-legged on the floor.

As always, her breath quickens, and she sees the same response in him. She thinks every time that she’ll be prepared for the shock of the connection— it’s happened so many times; it should be familiar and ordinary— but it never fails to startle her, as the world tilts and her senses dull to everything but him. She can hear his every breath. And his heartbeat, always joltingly out of sync with her own as the connection solidifies, smooths out, and settles into an easy rhythm, gradually beating in time with hers.

She’s used to seeing him looking imperious or regal, his thick, black hair swept aside, framing his long face. Of late, he’s abandoned his tunic and robes for a doublet and cape, and when he appears to her in the day, this is how he is: a dark blot at the corner of her vision, tall and broad and black as night.

But now he’s slumped as he sits against the wall. He’s in his undershirt and trousers and he’s sopping wet. His hair, usually so neatly coiffed, hangs messily over his brow, and his pale skin is blotted with smears of soot. There’s a jagged gash high on his left shoulder, and a dark trail of blood is snaked around his bare arm. His eyes are haunted and ringed red, and she has to make herself remember to speak.

“You look terrible,” she says before she can think better of it. He doesn’t react. He holds her gaze, but there’s no anger. “I didn’t mean to say that— It’s just you don’t usually—“

Her eyes drift to his wound, and she suddenly perceives a dull sting in her own shoulder.

“You’re hurt,” she says flatly.

He glances to the left for a moment, then returns to her eyes. Part of her begins to wonder if this was a mistake, if she should have left this be. But there’s the other part of her, the part that’s grown louder and more insistent, that fortifies her resolve.

“I don’t know why I reached out like this. I didn’t even know if it would work. I just,” she begins, and stops, sighing. “Oh, this is ridiculous. I know exactly why.”

He still hasn’t made a sound. It reminds her of when she told him of her vision in the cave on Ahch-To. Then, as she told him of her disappointment and her loneliness, his attentive patience and impassivity had been welcome, soothing. But now his silence is coiling inside her, and her heart begins to beat faster. Of course, his speeds to match hers, and she has to take a few steadying breaths to calm herself.

“It seems absurd to say that I’ve missed you,” she says, more softly than she’d intended. “I see you practically every day.”

He says nothing, his gaze steady and intense.

“Oh, say something. Anything. I can’t—“

“Rey.”

At the sound of her name from his lips, a shiver runs through her, chased by a quickening warmth spreading from her chest to her neck to her cheeks. A calming relief settles around her, and she feels the quiver of anticipation begin to build deep within her abdomen.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice breaking.

Everything is still, and Rey realizes that she’s stopped breathing.

“Of all the things you could have possibly said, that was probably the one thing I wasn’t prepared for,” she says, her own voice broken by a slight trembling.

She takes a moment to consider what he’s sorry for, but decides it’s really not important. At least he’s talking to her.

“What happened?” she asks, motioning to his arm.

“I could ask you the same.”

She’s been so focused on him that it hasn’t occurred to her that she must look a mess. There’s a dark bruise blooming on her temple from where her head hit the concrete. Her hair is matted and unkempt. She must look gaunt and weakened; she certainly feels it.

“Fair enough,” she replies.

There’s a look in his eyes that she can’t quite place. There’s a softness and uncertainty to it, but buffeted by distance. She feels his longing and his confusion, and it twists inside her.

“I’m sorry, too. I should’ve,” she starts, but her thoughts trail away. He’s staring at her so intently, and the bond between them surges and ebbs, and the air seems to crackle along the threads of energy that bind them one to another.

“What is this? Between us.” Her question hangs between them, heavy with meaning.

“I don’t know,” he says after a long pause.

For a panicked moment, the weight of everything unsaid between them becomes overwhelming. She realizes that she’s imagined being able to have this conversation dozens of times, but never considered what she would say.

“You have to know I thought— in the throne room, after— I thought it wasn’t— that Snoke—“

“Snoke was a liar,” he spits, his eyes flashing with sudden fury.

“Did you think so? Then?”

“No,” he concedes. “Maybe.”

She remembers being frozen in place, kneeling at his feet, looking at his expressionless face. She remembers hearing the lightsaber ignite, and her limbs coming free from invisible shackles. She remembers the waves of emotion in quick succession. Despair. Fear. Amazement. Awe.

“Then why—“

“Because he touched you.” His eyes burn with defiance. “Because he dared to assume I was his to control.”

She can feel his blood is up, the way his chest swells with each breath, the way his pulse quickens. It’s unnerving the degree to which she feels both thrilled and frightened by him in these moments, and knowing his rage now stems from protectiveness of her makes her swell with unexpected pride.

“I gave everything I had to him,” he continues. “And he wanted more. He wanted my name and my blood, and I gave them. He wanted Ha— my father— and I gave him that, too. He wouldn’t have you.”

“I’ve dreamed it,” she says, not knowing exactly why. “That when he commanded it, you lit your saber.”

“And I’ve dreamed of you. In the forest. Bringing yours down on me.”

She’s seen both. Staring up at him, watching his finger brush the ignition switch, unable to move as the snarl of red bursts through her neck and throat. Staring down at him, lying in the snow, his face burned and bleeding, and bringing the blue blade straight down through his breastbone.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“On Starkiller? I don’t know. I’d wanted to. I almost did.”

“No,” he says, darkly. “In the throne room. After the explosion. Why?”

The question hurts more than the blade would have.

“Is that what you would have done to me?” She stifles a sob and asks, “If you’d woken first?”

“No.” His voice is firm, absolute. “Never.”

“Then there’s your answer.” She draws up onto her knees, placing her hands on her legs.

He takes a long, slow breath. His posture straightens. He lifts his hand and brushes his hair from his face. His eyes don’t seem as dark, and the pale lights lining the cabin walls are reflected in them, blending gently with the red lights from wherever he’s at.

“We’re sharing dreams,” he says, calmer now.

“Of course we are,” she responds, though this is the first time she’s considered it. Once he says it, though, it seems that she’s always known it. They already share so much. Why should dreams be exempt?

It’s then that she considers the dreams themselves. The fighting. The killing. The dying. All in the past. All echoes of things already done. Except the other dreams. The quiet ones. And she wonders what that might mean.

“It’s different, this,” he says. “Can you feel it?”

She can. The tension that binds them feels taut, durable. And the power that courses through it flows from him into her, from her into him, and the pull of it manifests in every blade of light and every fall of shadow between.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“It’s stronger.”

“Yes.”

She studies his face. Some of the pain that was there is subdued, and she asks him what she’s wanted to ask for months. Ever since events tore them apart and swept them into opposite currents.

“What did you see? When we touched. Was it just my parents? Or was there more?”

“Is that why you wanted me here? To ask that?”

“No. It just occurred to me that you never said if you saw anything else.”

“I saw you,” he says, softly, deliberately. “Again and again. I saw you.”

And curiosity gets the better of her.

“What did you see?”

“I saw you climbing the sensor dish of a Star Destroyer. You fell. But you tried again. You kept falling, but you never gave up.”

“No one had ever made it to the top,” she says, remembering each time her rope snagged, each time her back wrenched when she stepped wrong and the line went taut as she plunged down. “I was going to be the first.” She looks down at her hands.

“Did you ever make it?”

“No,” she says, meeting his eyes again. “What else?”

“I saw you rebuild a flight simulator. I could feel your pride. Your sense of accomplishment.”

She laughs softly. “The settings were always too lenient. I was frustrated by the interface. The Empire apparently had lower standards than I would have assumed.” His lips twitch into something resembling a smile. Against the pallor of his complexion, they’re wine-dark and full, and she knows she looks at them too often. “What else?”

“I saw you find a crashed freighter.”

“Ben, I don’t—“

“You found a bed inside, but you still slept on the floor.”

“It was too soft,” she says, sniffling. Tears gather at the corners of her eyes. “I’d never even seen a bed like that before.”

“I saw you repair the ship. To sell. And I saw your,” he pauses, chuffing a hard breath through his nostrils, “friends take it, leaving you behind.”

She looks at him and is filled with a confused mix of wonder and revulsion. And she realizes that she’s feeling both her own feelings and his: tenderness, awe, and hatred of the other scavengers, the ones that stole her ship.

“I saw you cheated by that creature, Plutt. I saw you go hungry. And I saw your strength. Your defiance. You never begged.”

The tears threaten to come in earnest now. She tries to hold them back, but two thin streams roll down her cheeks, and she wipes them away with the cuff of her sleeve.

“I wanted to kill him,” he says, his tone cold and lethal. “I still want to kill him.”

For a guilty moment, she allows herself to picture him, drawn to full height, a storm of black against the earthen blur of the Jakku horizon, above a cowering Plutt, his hungry red blade sparking and poised for the kill. And the essence of that image, the fundament of its shape, is satisfying and terrible to behold, and feels altogether debauched and just and right.

“I saw you scratching out days in hash marks on the walls. I saw you shivering at night. I saw you dragging nets of scrap across the desert. I saw you teaching yourself to read.”

And she’s struck by a realization, something she did not expect. She stares at him, for a few seconds utterly dumbstruck.

“You only saw my past. Not the future.”

It had never crossed her mind that he did not share in a vision of things to come. The clarity of purpose she’d sensed in him from the moment she arrived at the Supremacy, and his familiarity, the way she felt like they shared a sacred trust, a secret only they knew: all of it led her to assume that he’d seen her future, as she’d seen his.

“But,” she stutters, “you were so certain I would— in the lift, you said—“

“Because I saw you watch ships come and go from the outpost. I felt your hope. That someone would come back. And your fear that you were wrong.” She feels the same raw, unyielding pain that struck her when he’d made her admit she knew the truth about her parents. He leans in closer. “I saw the junkers call you nothing. I saw you call yourself no one. And I felt you believe it.”

It strikes like a hammer. She understands. You’re nothing. But not to me. And she senses his hurt. The open wound of rejection and loss. His face is pale and ash-darkened, and she can feel him through their bond: a wordless entreaty, a plaintive Why?

“My friends were dying,” she says, and recognizes a soft pleading in her own voice. “I couldn’t.”

“And that’s why you came to me. For them. Because you thought I would help them.”

“Is that what you think?” Of course it is. It’s why he came to Crait with fire and steel and blood on his mind. It’s why he’s trapped in a crimson-gilded cage of his own making. It’s why he’s sitting alone in the red dark, broken and afraid. “You think I don’t—“

He looks away. She leans forward on her knees and edges closer to him.

“Ben, look at me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his eyes darting back to hers.

“It does. I came to you because of what I saw. Because of you. Who you are. Who you can still be.”

She can see it, sense it: the surge of disbelief within him. She moves closer. He stiffens, but doesn’t shrink from her approach.

“Search your feelings,” she whispers. For a few long seconds, he looks down, and then trains his gaze back on her.

“What did you see? Tell me. I need to know.”

She pauses. They’re only inches apart now, and she can feel the warmth of him through his wet clothes. And she’s not sure when it happened, but her legs are on either side of his, and she feels an unshakable urge to put her hands on him, to feel him solid and real beneath her. But she instead closes her eyes and relives the images she’s clung to for months.

“You,” she says, opening her eyes. “Me.”

“Then why. I offered you everything I had to give.”

It’s a fair question. But one she’s never doubted. She leans back slightly and considers her words carefully.

“Did it never occur to you that I didn’t want,” she starts, and the words catch for a moment, “to rule the galaxy with—“

She stops, and watches his expression darken and his eyes go coal-black, and his lips press into a tight line.

“Go on. Say it.”

She swallows once, and says it.

“Kylo Ren.”

She steels herself for his fury. She can feel the rising tension through the bond, and a cold sliver dripping down her spine raises gooseflesh on her neck, her arms. But the anger never comes. His expression falls, and the tension between them shifts, and his eyes are pleading and stricken with conflict.

“And what if this is what I am? What if Ben Solo is dead?”

“He’s not,” she says quietly. “Not to me.”

A shuddering breath escapes him, and his lips tremble, and his own tears begin to flow. She extends her hands in a slow, gentle motion, and holds them out for him to take them.

“Come home, Ben. Please.”

He begins to lift his hands, and they’re shaking. The dim light paints him in shades of red and gray. Her heart hammers against her chest, and she can feel the violent drumbeat of blood surging beneath their skins. He hesitates, and in his eyes she sees the depth of ages, the terror of a frightened boy, the desperate yearning of the man he wants to believe he can be.

Rey breathes deeply, leans forward, and grasps his hands.

Chapter 4: Fugue and Reverie

He expects a vision. He braces for it. As she takes his hands, there’s a violent surge in energies around them. Last time they touched through the Force, it was just fingertips, and the power of the connection was so potent then he was certain they would both suffer some permanent damage from it. But none of that matters anymore. He had long ago stopped being able to understand any of this.

In the hut on Ahch-To, the shock of contact had sent them both reeling, eyes locked and motionless, but drawn in and through each other as their visions took hold. This time, he is keenly aware of her touch, and the initial violence that rippled the Force calms before swirling tight around them. He feels as though he is made of iron and steel and she is lodestone, drawing in and warping every part of him with every part of her.

Her eyes are filled with the same sense of awe and wonder as before. Tears come streaming down her cheeks, and he knows the same is happening to him because he can see it through her. He can feel the barriers between them collapse, and he is bombarded by the way she senses his desire, and the riot of emotion that it stirs in her.

He sees himself staring at her with animal intensity, as though he’s caught her scent, and he can smell her, through the bacta and the sweat, the heady musk of her, sweet and sour and shot through with poisons that promise a cure. And he feels her sudden terror, a blaze of panic, blending now into a determined urgency as she lets her hands glide along the length of his arms.

It’s the way she calms him with her touch. The cold fetters that hold him fast in the dark give way to a dimly radiant warmth, and a dull ache spreads through him as he yields to her, and lets his hands slide up her arms as she’s pulled into him. It’s the way that calm sparks something in him, and the rushing heat of blood and light rifles through him, and his hands take firm hold of her above the elbows.

Strong, he feels her think. He’s so strong. The sensations come in rapid succession: him bringing his saber down on hers, the shock of impact, the dread and fear; him bringing his saber down through the plastene and flesh of a praetorian, her hand on him, leaning for balance, the savage thrill of it. And instead of resisting his grip, she leans into it, and closes her own hands around the thickness of his arms, her nails digging into his skin.

It’s the way her strength, so raw and vital, is communicated through her eyes. They’re deep and dark and still wide with wonder, but now sharpened by purpose. The hesitant fear that permeates his bones and infects his every nerve is burned away, and he anchors himself to her. He is no longer able to tell if he’s pulling her closer, or if she is pulling him, but she’s right up against him now. His hands have drifted up her back while hers are on his chest, and they’re so close now that each quickened breath seems shared from the same set of lungs.

The insistent ebb and flow of the Force around them now pulses with dizzy splendor. His whole body is tense and easy, wanting and sated, and he senses the same desperate completion in her: the relief of the rightness of it; the ache and the need. Their eyes are still locked and unblinking, their lips almost touching, and he can now sense her desire for him as it surges through him in an awesome wave. He sees himself as she sees him: tall and broad and powerful, bristling with danger; wanting him for his light, needing him for his darkness.

It’s the way her hands close around fistfuls of the wet fabric of his undershirt, and he wants to take hold of the passion in her, make it his, make all of her his. She senses the rising tension, and she softens, her fingers uncurling, her hands drifting up and over his shoulders. Their bond blooms with warmth, and she presses her lips against his: gentle, pliant, tender.

Clarity washes through him as he leans into her kiss, and he is gripped by a serene frenzy of urges. His right hand closes around the nape of her neck. He presses harder against her, and they are as joined as they’ve ever been. But he wants more. He seizes the energies that bind them and pushes deeper into her, groping to possess everything, to take hold of her most primal instincts and bend them to his need. His thoughts betray him, and burst through their bridged minds in a single word: Mine.

She pulls back from him, her eyes blazing, and he feels her wrest their shared energies to encircle him and arrest his advance. She presses hard into his skin as she moves her hand behind his neck and threads her fingers into his hair, gripping it roughly. She is all hungry resolve, taking hold of him and pulling him deeper as she blasts her response through the bond:

No, mine.

And crashes back into him, her mouth on his, and it’s a mess of teeth and tongues, biting and grasping, hands everywhere. The Force is wild with chaotic shifts as it bends and surges, and they settle into a frantic sort of rhythm. Pushing and pulling each other. Threatening the boundaries that make them separate beings, and it’s all alien and familiar at once. This is war. This is a dance. This is fighting and fucking, sacred and profane and theirs alone.

And at once they understand that the power that’s built around and through them has reached a point beyond their ability to control. It’s rising darkness and falling light. It’s the blend and the contrast. The hope and the fear. The breaking of the world and it’s creation. It’s the manifestation and the aspect, all things made flesh, naked and ensouled. It’s the smallness of their place in the universe and the weight of their entwined destinies. It’s the way that they are joined and parted: a man and a woman, life and destruction, a revolt of starfire in the cold dark.

A final surge comes at the last moment before the energies peak, shuddering through them both, a terrifying storm of raw power. He holds tighter to her and he’s not certain that either of them could breathe if they wanted, captive and enthralled. They pull back and their eyes meet at a depthless place of harmony, an unchained freedom clawed from the edges of death; whole, at peace, balanced.

The tension breaks at last, and he lets go of her as she lets go of him, and they collapse together on the floor, shaking and straining for breath.

***

They lie together on the floor in the quiet of their rooms, and they talk. It could be hours, minutes, days. It’s hard to tell how time works in this place they’ve made for each other.

“What happens now?”

“Don’t look at me. I only saw the future. I don’t know how we get there.”

***

“What did you tell them?”

“That you killed Snoke.”

She laughs, snorting. “And they believed you?”

“What choice did they have?”

“Wait. If that’s so, why doesn’t everyone know it? Why is there no bounty?”

“Hux wanted one, believe me.”

“Then why—“

“Because you’re mine.”

“Careful, Solo.”

***

“Ben, I need you to know something.”

“Hmm.”

“If you try to hurt my friends again, I’ll have to kill you.”

“If I do that, I’ll want you to.”

***

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’m not really gone.”

Chapter 5: The Tinkerer

Armitage Hux stood amidst the smoldering wreckage and took stock of the extent of the damage. He had only been in these rooms once previously, when the crates with Supreme Leader Snoke’s personal effects had arrived during the Finalizer’s pre-commission inspections. Hux wasn’t precisely aware of the contents— Snoke would not permit his collections to be inventoried— but he understood numbers on a balance sheet, and what lay in smoking rubble all around him had been priceless. And that didn’t even take into account the damage done to the walls, the floors, or the damage caused by water from the sprinklers, which had flooded out of the chambers and onto the lower levels where the floor tiles had been breached.

“Cordon off the area. Arrange a detail of technicians and summon the ship’s carpenter,” Hux said to the officer who had stood mute beside him during the inspection. He turned to the shorter man, hissing through grit teeth, “And keep this quiet.”

“Yes, General.”

Left alone, Hux’s face twisted into a bitter scowl. When the reports had reached him, rousing him from what little sleep he allowed himself, he was scarcely surprised. Ren had always been mercurial, driven by unknowable furies, and prone to seemingly random acts of violent destruction. He snickered as he remembered his father’s stories about serving the Empire, and Lord Vader’s famous propensity for punishing even minor insubordination with death by Force choking. Even though Hux himself had been the victim of such sorcery, he thought grimly that at least Vader’s rages had been cost efficient.

Now, it seemed, the Supreme Leader had gone truly mad. If he hadn’t been already.

Ever since the humiliating escape staged by the Resistance on Crait, Ren had receded from view, appearing less and less often in his nominal capacity as ruler of the First Order. Hux certainly didn’t mind that particular aspect of his madness, but where Ren had elected to exert his authority, the results had been more than vexing.

Despite having suffered a serious blow to his credibility as a military and political leader, Ren had made it clear that the remnant of the Resistance was to be considered of no relevant consequence. While it was understandable that Ren would want to blunt the repercussions of his failure, the breadth of his denial, and the audacity of the lie being circulated, were breathtaking. The official policy of the First Order under Supreme Leader Kylo Ren was to classify the Battle of Crait as a victory, and to deny the existence of any rebel organization arising therefrom.

That denial also extended to the matter of the death of Supreme Leader Snoke. Upon finding Ren unconscious at the base of Snoke’s throne, mere feet from the dead ruler’s bisected corpse, Hux’s first instinct had been to kill him and be done with it. Instead, fate intervened, and Ren awoke. He had been clear with Hux that Snoke had been killed by the Jedi girl, who had mysteriously arrived at the Supremacy in a tiny escape pod barely more than an hour before calamity had struck. But after Crait, Ren had reversed himself, instead ordering that the official story outside of high command be that Snoke died in the blast that destroyed the First Order’s flagship. Another deflection of responsibility for his failures, Hux thought.

Ren’s story was nonsense in any case. Hux was no fool. Snoke had been many things: a tyrant, a sadist, a visionary; but the one thing he had not been was weak. Hux knew first hand that Snoke had been an astonishingly dangerous creature, and that if he had been killed astride his own throne, and his elite guards diced to bits by a lightsaber, the deed hadn’t been done by one slip of a girl; and if it had, she certainly wouldn’t have done so and left Ren alive and unhurt. No, something more was afoot.

Hux strode from the ruined chambers and out into the refreshed air of the corridor.

“No one goes in there without my say,” Hux said to the guard. “No one.”

The guard saluted, and Hux stalked off toward the bridge.

***

Hux passed through the corridors at a determined clip, eager to return to the command deck. Here, in the bowels of the ship, he was forced to confront the bereft state of the enlisted ranks, and what he observed brought acid rising in his throat. A squad of stormtroopers patrolled the hallways in formation and metered step, but Hux could detect a certain dearth of enthusiasm in the bearing of their postures and the tempo of their march. His lips curled into a sneer as he regarded them.

“Squad leader!” Hux barked.

The troopers came to a simultaneous halt. The squad leader stepped forward.

“General.” The trooper saluted and stood at attention.

Hux stepped forward, hands behind his back, regarding him. He was nothing exceptional. Middling height. Reedy voice.

“What is your designation, soldier?”

“LC-4491, sir.”

Hux straightened to full height, and stepped closer to the trooper, staring down at him.

“Who is your company sergeant?”

“GX-4892, sir.”

“As you were,” Hux said after a long silence. The trooper fell back into formation, motioned to his men, and the squad resumed its patrol in perfect synchrony, as though they had never been interrupted.

Hux continued on toward the turbolift, seething. The loss of Captain Phasma had been a serious blow. She would never have allowed such an unimpressive specimen to rise in rank above his fellows. She had understood the importance of weeding out the weak and unfit. She had been a loyal soldier, a ruthless warrior, and a cunning strategist. The reports that she was killed in combat with the traitor stormtrooper, FN-2187, were surely lies. Hux knew it would be next to impossible to find a suitable replacement, and he had already begun to reorganize the entire corps around a more decentralized model. It wasn’t ideal, but little was at this juncture.

***

The bridge of the Finalizer buzzed with activity. Deck officers patrolled the sunken pits beneath the central platform, hovering over the workstations of the non-commissioned crew, scanning for error. For weakness, Hux stressed to his staff. The Empire had been established with a mandate to root out weakness, to crush it under heel; as long as Hux was in command, the First Order would pursue those same ideals.

After the Battle of Crait, the Finalizer had become a temporary mobile command center. What remained of the First Order fleet had been stationed at the Contingency rallying point at the edge of the unknown regions for more than a month, performing needed repairs and beginning construction on new shipyards. What remained of the main flotilla was nowhere near large enough to maintain control of the core systems, and Hux had been forced to deploy garrisons throughout the occupied regions to reinforce what gains had been made. Gains that were now in jeopardy due to the suicidal folly that had seized the Resistance admiral, and led her to demolish the First Order’s vanguard, dragging everything in her doomed cruiser’s path along with her into the blue-white oblivion of hyperspace.

The so-called Holdo Maneuver had destroyed half the Star Destroyer fleet, and had scuttled the Supremacy, which was now a husk of durasteel and plastoid orbiting Crait. Almost two million casualties, Hux had been told. The loss of life concerned him less than the loss of the armory. They’d been able to salvage most of the kyber from the wreckage, but certainly not all, and kyber was a scarce resource. Emperor Palpatine had seen to that, and Snoke had continued the tradition. The mines at Jedha had been stripped and vaporized before the Battle of Yavin. The mines of Ilum had similarly been exhausted. The kyber heart that powered Starkiller Base now resided at the center of main sequence yellow dwarf, and was unlikely to be useful to anyone for another three to five billion years.

The Navigators, as they had been called, were always adept at finding new sources of kyber, and it was whispered that they themselves had come from deep within the unknown regions. Members of the high command had advocated attempting to re-establish contact. But the coterie of purple-garbed creatures that haunted Snoke’s throne room and operated his arcane collection of menacing devices and antique machines had disappeared along with the Supreme Leader, as though they had been apparitions conjured by the old sorcerer. Hux had dismissed the idea immediately. He had regarded them as an eccentricity of Snoke’s private amusements. And the creatures’ black, insectoid masks, fitted with unsettling violet lenses, had always struck Hux as something too theatrical to be real. Snoke had been a master of theatrics, after all, insisting that his image be projected throughout the galaxy as a forty-foot holo, and festooning his personal chambers with the trappings of some dark and ancient majesty, as though he were a Sith Emperor from children’s tales.

No, parlor tricks and magic spells were a thing of the past. The First Order would have what it required, and nothing was going to stop it: not the outmoded tenets of a failed religion, not the fever-mad scion of a wizards’ dynasty, and certainly not the mongrel rabble that now looked to infect the galaxy as a result of Ren’s incompetence.

Hux strode to the viewing platform and contemplated the star field before them. Each one a target, each one a test of will. They would all submit. It was only a matter of time and strength, and Hux almost had the pieces in place to secure both. The new shipyards just below his vantage on the viewing deck were in the process of building two dozen new Star Destroyers. With luck, they would be commissioned and ready for war within the year. With luck, Hux thought, and with new leadership.

***

Later, in the expanse of his official chambers, Hux sat studying a datapad. The holo projector on his desk let out a shrill beeping.

“Yes?”

Captain Peavey’s translucent blue image sprang from the projector.

“General.”

“Captain. Report.”

“Yes, General. Your orders were to inform you if any coded communications were sent through the emergency channel.”

Hux set the datapad down and turned toward the projection.

“And?”

“One came through within the last hour, on the subspace channel reserved for TIE pilot extraction.”

“Its origin?”

“Cloaked, sir.”

Hux considered for a moment, glancing back at his datapad.

“Captain, has the Supreme Leader emerged from his cabin yet today?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir.”

Hux pressed his lips into a thin smile and returned his attention to Peavey’s image.

“Very good, Captain. Transmit the details of the communication to my private terminal, and erase the archive.”

“Yes, General.”

Hux returned his attention to the datapad.

“Oh, Captain,” Hux said, not bothering to look up as Peavey snapped back to attention, “Have designation number GX-4892’s company selected for reprogramming.”

“Yes, immediately, General.”

Chapter 6: The Engineer

The night sky on Vedic III was hardly night at all. The brilliant blue of Vedic Prime filled a third of the sky, and it’s reflected light imbued everything with a ghostly, dreamlike hue. The days were far different, with the light from the sun blasting over the horizon of the gas giant, changing everything from a chilly blue to stark and cloudless white. One of the techs had said it was because the geothermal vents of the moon had seeded the upper atmosphere with too much sulfur dioxide; that made the sky bone white during the day, but it also kept heat conditions on the surface a survivable, but less than comfortable, temperature.

Rose Tico crouched beneath the fuselage of one of the newly requisitioned transports, elbow deep in wiring and detached hoses. Wherever they had dug up this heap, Rose knew it was going to take a miracle for it to ever leave the tarmac. As it was, Rey and Chewie had towed it into atmosphere four days earlier, and there it had sat, mocking Rose from a distance. She’d never shrunk from a challenge before, and she wasn’t going to start now. The dim light of the Vedician night was a blessing: it afforded her the opportunity to work late, and to avoid the often scorching heat of the days.

That heat was taking its toll, though. At that very moment, Rose was chipping the hardened residue of melted wire casings off of one of the fuel lines. It would take her a few hours to disentangle the electrical mess inside the maintenance panel, refit the casings, and apply coolant foam to the interior. All of the ships and vehicles were a little worse for wear. But the location was remote, nestled a good distance from the major hyperspace routes, in the unaffiliated regions between the Mid and Outer Rims.

As for the crew members and soldiers of the Resistance, the heat was a nuisance, but the nights were cool, and the ground tended to become damp with a slight mist. Spirits were generally good, and their recruiting efforts had lately borne fruit. Still, some accidents had happened, and today had seen the most significant of those.

Rose hadn’t been there to see it. She’d been arranging tools in the equipment shed when the hue and cry went up throughout the base. Rey had collapsed in the training yard.

It seemed a ridiculous thing to suggest. Rose  had watched Rey fight; the young Jedi was a marvel of technique, efficient and brutal. She’d managed to collect an impressive array of weapons for training— her lightsaber had been nearly destroyed during the Battle of Crait, and she now primarily used monomolecular blades appropriated from the First Order to stay in practice.

Rose had helped Rey assemble her first practice droid from the decommissioned scrap of positively ancient HK units and some astromech parts. Together they’d worked through the peculiar challenges presented by having to design something that could be hacked to pieces, easily reassembled, and made to return to working order within an hour of the initial disassembly. The results had been decidedly mixed, but Rose loved the process of it, and it had allowed her to get to know Rey better.

That was why it had seemed so strange as Rose rushed from the other side of the base, arriving at the med bay just in time to see Rey wheeled in on a gurney. She was pale and clammy, and she had a dark red abrasion on her temple. She’d taken a nasty spill, that much was sure.

While people clustered around the entrance to the triage unit, Rose had jogged to the training yard, sure that one of the droids had malfunctioned. Must have exploded, or shorted out suddenly, caught Rey off balance, she remembered thinking. But no. Nothing out of the ordinary. So, she busied herself initiating the reassembly protocols, and returned to the base as the sun was disappearing behind the hazy cerulean mass of Vedic Prime.

She had run into Finn, who was trying to convince a very faint looking Rey to stay in the med bay, or at least let someone watch over her in the Falcon. With Chewbacca off-planet on a supply run, she would be alone in the old freighter. Rose couldn’t blame Finn for his worry; Rey looked awful. But Rose could also tell she was looking for the kindest, but most expeditious, way to tell him to sod off.

Rose had waited for a tactful opening, slid in beside him, taking his arm, and said, “Finn, Rey’s a big girl. And though I’m sure she appreciates the concern, you should respect her privacy.” When Finn opened his mouth to protest, she quickly added, “And even in this state she could probably throw you through a wall. So, let’s let her be, okay?”

Finn had stood gobsmacked, and Rey had walked by mouthing a soundless “thank you” to Rose as she left through the main base doors and onto the landing pad.

And now Rose was out on that same tarmac, two hundred yards from the Falcon, covered in carbon resin, spent from another day fighting the good fight. Finn had not been particularly pleased with her, she knew, but he would get over it; if there was one thing Rose had learned about Finn, it was that the man had a boundless capacity for understanding. Sometimes it just took him awhile.

Rose pulled her arm from the mass of wiring, spit a curse, and carefully re-secured the maintenance panel. She shimmied out from under the transport, dusted herself off, and headed back to the base.

***

“Something’s wrong. I know it.”

Rose must have dozed off. She snapped back to consciousness to find Finn standing at the dusty barracks window, looking out at the blue-gray haze. With the windows being made of six inch transparisteel, capable of withstanding ion cannon bombardment, seeing anything through them was next to impossible. But it was better than nothing.

“Ugh,” she groaned, “come to bed. I’m cold.”

“I’m sorry,” Finn said, turning toward her. “It’s just— Something’s been off. For awhile. And what happened this afternoon. It isn’t like Rey.”

Finn’s face was the picture of sincere concern, and Rose couldn’t be frustrated with him. To be fair, she was worried about Rey, too. But Finn’s protectiveness of his friend had never really waned, even after it became clear that she was in no need whatsoever of protecting.

“Fine,” Rose said gently, sitting up. “Let’s talk about it. But come to bed.”

He gave her a soft smile, his eyes still half-squinted with worry, and crossed back to the bed, climbing under the blanket. He stayed sitting up, and drew his knees up partway to his chest, his arms draped over them. He let his head droop a bit and let out a heavy sigh.

“Finn,” she said, careful not to make it seem like she was scolding him, “have you ever considered you might not know Rey all that well?”

His head snapped up.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s,” Rose began, but stopped short. She let out a sigh of her own and started again. “Maybe this is how she is. She spent a long time alone. Being around so many people all the time can’t be easy.”

Rose had seen Rey at her most buoyant and indefatigable. She was bright and inquisitive, quick to laugh, and fierce when challenged. But Rose could also sense a guardedness to Rey’s cheerful demeanor, and, more than once, she’d caught her staring off into space, her eyes sad and distant, as though she was privy to a world all her own, entrusted with a secret only she could comprehend.

“I guess I never thought about it like that,” Finn said. It was the way he said things when he really hadn’t considered something. It was a frank and endearing trait, and Rose cherished it.

“She’s got a lot of responsibility on her shoulders now. And I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to have those powers.” Rose had often wondered what it would be like to be able to move objects with a thought, or to sense the feelings of others. “It must be very lonely.”

Finn’s face fell slightly, and his lips pursed.

“What is it?” she asked. “There’s something else.”

“It’s not important,” he said in that way that meant that, yes, it was indeed important.

“Finn.”

He looked at her with those soulful eyes, and Rose might have been inclined to let him off the hook. But she could sense this really was important, and gave him a serious glare.

“Spit it out, soldier,” she quipped. “Or I’ll stun you again.”

For a second, he didn’t react. But then his face screwed into genuine apprehension, and his eyes darted to the bedside table, and Rose couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

“The look on your face!” She doubled over, gasping for air. Through tears, she could see him kicking himself for being so gullible. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, her hand on her chest, regaining her composure. “Oh, you’re so cute.”

“Ha ha ha,” he deadpanned. “Very funny, Tico. I’ll show you cute.”

“Oh, don’t you dare!”

But it was too late. He was already on her, his fingers under her arms and between her ribs, tickling mercilessly. She squirmed and shrieked, and wrestled with him before finally getting her own hands under his arms and giving him the same treatment. She wasn’t quite sure when it happened, but gradually the tickling came to a stop, and he was pressing his lips against hers. They stayed like that for awhile, both of them bone tired and sleepy, and just enjoyed each other; slow kisses, soft touches.

They might have drifted off to sleep. Rose couldn’t be completely sure. But the next thing she knew, he was looking at her with the boyish earnestness that had made her fall for him almost as soon as they met.

“You’re not upset that I’m worried about Rey, are you? You’re not, you know—“

“Jealous? I was. A little. At first.”

“You know it’s not like that. Right?”

“Hey,” she said quietly, her hand cupping his cheek, “I do know. She’s your friend. You were there for each other through a really, extremely dangerous experience.”

Finn’s expression turned resolute and serious, tinged with a sadness Rose still didn’t entirely understand.

“She was the first person who ever looked at me like I was worth fighting for. But you,” he said deliberately, lending each word its due weight, “you were the first person who ever looked at me like I was worth dying for.”

“You know,” she said, planting a chaste kiss on his upper lip, “you can be pretty charming when you try. For a bucket head.”

“And you can be pretty sweet for a wrench-jockey.”

He smiled and leaned in for another kiss.

“You’re not getting out of answering me that easy,” she whispered, just before their lips met.

“Huh?”

“The other thing, dummy. The thing that’s bothering you.”

“Oh,” he said, sitting up, “right.”

Rose scooted up on her pillow to a half sitting position and straightened the rumpled blanket.

“It just doesn’t add up,” Finn said after a moment of contemplation. “Her story about being on the Supremacy. She was taken prisoner, but she never said how she got captured. She said she was able to escape in the explosion, but she came back with cuts and bruises and her lightsaber torn in half. And she’s never said what happened.”

“Maybe she’s not ready,” Rose replied, though she knew he had a point.

“That’s what has me worried,” he said, looking straight ahead, focusing on nothing in particular.

“You’re going to have to explain what you mean by that.”

“She’s been his prisoner. Twice.”

Rose didn’t need to say the name. They both knew it. But she said it all the same.

“Kylo Ren.”

“Yeah.”

Rose studied Finn’s face. He was still looking straight ahead, but his brow was knit, and his eyes were hard and flinty. She let her gaze drift to his bare back, and there it was: the mottled, jagged scar that cleaved a rut in his skin, two and a half feet long, right next to his spine. The wound he’d gotten from Kylo’s lightsaber. The wound he’d gotten defending his friend.

“So, why—“

“Because no one was ever Ren’s prisoner twice,” Finn said darkly, “Poe’s the only one I’ve ever known of that got away. And he was only captive for a few hours.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Phasma would order a squad up, march them into the hangar bay and have them executed.” His cadence was different than usual: grim, mechanical. “Or they’d be airlocked.”

“No, what would he do to them?”

“I only ever heard stories. Poe said he was strapped to a table and Ren pulled memories from his mind with the Force. As for the others,” he trailed off for a second before concluding, “I don’t know.”

Rose tenderly placed her hand on his shoulder. He turned toward her, and his expression softened.

“Finn,” she said, her voice quiet and knowing, “when she wants to talk about it, she will. On her terms.” Her hand drifted to her medallion, and she gripped it, tracing her thumb around its edge. “Sometimes it takes awhile to accept that something really happened. That it wasn’t just a bad dream.”

Finn leaned into her and slid under the blanket. He closed his arms around her, kissing her forehead. They lay together like that a long time, gradually drifting off to sleep.

Chapter 7: Rey

Notes:

A few style guide notes here that were attached to an earlier tumblr post:

1. Rey and Kylo/Ben chapters will employ a present tense hybrid third-person limited/stream of consciousness POV. I'm doing this because they both experience so much through the Force, and past tense would take away from that sense of immediacy and immersion. All other characters will employ a standard past tense third-person limited POV, and will, with some exceptions, be retreading time already spent in present tense with our dual protagonists.

2. I have, in the past, struggled with deciding whether to use Kylo or Ben in narration. So, here are the rules. In Rey chapters, he's Ben. Period. In Kylo chapters, he's Kylo. From other characters' perspectives (with one predictable exception), he's either Kylo or Ren. It just feels right. (And is subject to change as the narrative progresses).

“It sheared completely in half,” he repeats back to her.

They’d gone back to sitting. Hours had passed, and unlike when they first connected earlier in the evening, they were close, their legs almost touching. Almost. They hadn’t yet tried contact since they’d both collapsed, sprawled on the floor. She wasn’t sure if it would even be possible. And part of her was afraid it was. The sheer power of what had passed between them was both terrifying and intoxicating, and made her simultaneously hesitant and impatient to see what would happen if they touched again.

“Yes,” she replies, forcing herself to focus again on the matter of her damaged lightsaber. “Am I going to have to make a habit of repeating myself?”

He ignores the rejoinder and looks to the side and down. She doesn’t even have to use the bond to know that this is his reaction when he’s puzzling through something.

“You could try to align the pieces in the focusing chamber. But then you’d have to construct some kind of secure mount to hold both sides in place without them moving. Even then, the power flow would be interrupted.”

“Wait, is the crystal generating some kind of plasma stasis field?” She doesn’t wait for him to respond. The gears are already turning in her mind, and she looks away, visualizing the interplay of the lightsaber’s components. When she starts to speak again, it’s an excited rambling. “Of course it is. The power flow is amplified through the focusing chamber and creates a feedback loop contained by the crystal’s field. It’s like a deflector shield, but with a frequency resonance tailored to hold the blade in place. But how—“

She stops because she’s met his eyes again and he’s staring at her with an expression communicating something between animal lust and bewildered awe.

“Sorry,” she says, feeling her cheeks begin to warm, “it’s just fascinating.”

“No,” he replies, never breaking his intensity. “go on.”

“How— how does the power flow self-regulate if the crystal’s integrity is compromised? If it’s anything like ray shielding, the field would become unstable and discharge.”

“Refraction through an occluded crystal causes an unstable field. A split crystal— I don’t know if it’s possible.” He furrows his brow, and Rey recognizes the thing he does with his mouth, moving his lips as though he’s caught the taste of something he wants to savor. “You could maybe reposition the housing and install quillion emitters, like mine has, but you’d have to be prepared for an explosion the first time you ignite.”

Now it’s her turn to feel a sense of awe. At his dedication to his craft. His studious attention to detail. She thinks back to handling his lightsaber in Snoke’s throne room. It was heavy, thick, and practically vibrating with frantic energy. Even in the dire circumstance of the moment, the technician in Rey had taken note of the oddity of exposed circuitry, and even more odd: on the outer housing, a single red wire, held in place by precise solders, running the length of the hilt like a vein.

Something stirs in her, and she is reminded suddenly of her surroundings. The exposed maintenance ducting. The bypassed safety components. The overclocked hyperdrive. And she looks at him with a tenderness she’s not felt before. Something deeper and more substantial, tinged with grief.

She can see he feels the shift in her, and a shadow passes over his face. Maybe it’s because she’s looking at him with fresh tears glassing her eyes. Maybe it’s because she just thought of his father. But she knows he can feel the resonance of the change in her, and she tries to bring herself back to the moment.

“Is that why your blade is all,” she pauses, searching for the words, but the way he’s looking at her isn’t helping, and she settles on, “ripply?”

“The crystal in my saber is cracked.” His voice is deeper, darker than just moments before.

“How did that happen?”

He doesn’t respond, but only looks at her, his intensity unwavering, and she can sense an encroaching misery just beneath the surface.

“Ben,” she says softly, “if it’s painful— I didn’t— you don’t have to tell me.”

“Yes, it’s painful. But sometimes pain is necessary. Sometimes it’s useful.”

Maybe she’s been moving closer to him. Or maybe he’s been drifting toward her. But he’s almost touching her again, his fingers gliding just above the skin of her arm, raising the hairs there and sending chills, electric and soothing, shooting through her.

“You can feel the Force. You can sense what it wants.” His voice pulses through her. “But that doesn’t mean you know what it can do.”

He inches closer, hovering over her, his fingers still tracing ovals above the skin of her arm.

“You’ve beaten me. Three times. Overcome my will. That wasn’t the Force. It was you. Your strength. Your focus.”

She realizes that her lips have parted slightly, the grief she felt before heating to a smolder, and a sudden rush of emotion wells in her: old anger, that fury at his imperious fascination, at his compulsion to try to instruct her. But it’s linked and blended now with something else. Three times. In the interrogation room. During their duel on Starkiller. And just hours before. The memory of it sends a powerful tremor through their bond, and his eyes flash with excitement.

“Imagine what you could do.”

“Maybe you’d like a demonstration,” she says, her voice lower pitched than she’d intended, soft on her breath and sharp with menace. If anything, his gaze intensifies in response, and he leans in, and she can feel the same electric tingle brush against her lips.

“I might.”

“You think you know me, Ben Solo?”

She cranes her neck, and lets her parted lips drift over his, almost touching.

“Then you’ll know there’s one thing I’m better at than anybody,” she whispers.

“And what’s that?”

She holds there for a moment, so close to him that his warmth bleeds into and through her whole body. And then she drifts away, and settles back to where she was sitting before, holding his gaze.

“Waiting,” she says, and offers him a knowing smirk.

His eyes are devilish, dancing with mischief. And then something truly remarkable happens.

He smiles.

***

Rey awakens to the stuffy darkness of her cabin. She’d fallen asleep on the floor next to her bunk. Ben was gone. How long she’d slept, and how long they’d spent talking— of everything, of nothing at all— was anyone’s guess. She supposes it’s at least a good sign that the security hasn’t been overridden. She can picture it: waking to the sound of shouting and boots on grating, more concerned faces as the crew quarters door slides open, more doting and questioning and worry.

Mercifully, she is alone in the ship. She stands slowly, steadying herself against the wall, and takes in a sharp breath as she feels the sudden dizziness strike. There’s a faint ringing in her ears, but as she regains her balance, it fades and quiets, before disappearing altogether.

She favors herself a glance in the mirror. She is a mess: hair matted and half fallen out of her bands, clothes wrinkled and sweat stained, and in addition to the now yellowish-purple bruise on her head, she has new marks on her. Short scratches on her arms and neck. A small bite mark on her lower lip. Nothing too noticeable, but a visceral reminder of what had happened last night.

What had happened? She had expected a vision when she took his hands. But the Force apparently had had other plans, and the resulting cascade of emotion and desire had swept both she and Ben to a place neither of them knew could exist. Now they were joined in a way that was beyond the ability to ignore. Even as she stands in the dim light of the crew cabin, she feels him near. At the same time, he’s never felt farther away, and though she hasn’t felt this relieved and calm in months, she’s now aware of a new and distinct emptiness in place of the confusion that haunted her before.

But, as the world begins to sharpen into focus, she can also detect a bright thread of energy woven into the infinite latticework of the Living Force extending out from her, and she knows that if she just follows that thread, she’ll find him on the other side. The thought is calming, and as she begins to shrug out of her soiled clothes, she can’t help but smile.

***

Hours later, after having used the ‘fresher and applied some fresh bacta to her bruise and newer marks, she’d gotten dressed: a fresh, light tabard, mid-length trousers, and short cloth boots. The standard day cycle was only half gone, though the onboard computer informed her there were only two more hours left of sunlight outside.

The day-night cycles of Vedic III were hell to calculate. The moon was slung around Vedic Prime once every seventy-two hours, seventeen of which were spent in the gas giant’s umbra. But Vedic III also rotated on its own slightly tilted axis once every sixteen hours, and Rey had long since given up trying to predict when the sun would rise or set. As she had taken a seat at the instrument panel, checking the orbital position of the moon, it dawned on her that the sun had just been passing behind the planet when she closed the Falcon’s boarding hatch. If what she was looking at was right, it’d been at least twenty hours.

Maybe there would be concerned faces and questions after all.

Standing up, she walks back to the crew quarters and opens one of the storage bays. Inside are the vellum and leather Jedi texts, a few other mementos of Ahch-To, and the wreckage of her lightsaber. Thinking back to her conversation with Ben the night before, she lifts the severed halves, one in each hand, and crosses to the makeshift workbench in the corner.

She flips on the overhead light and studies the ancient weapon. There’s a grace to its design: smooth and chromed, with a stylishly ridged grip and a flared rim above the emitter coil. Someone had taken a great deal of care in constructing it, and that care was borne out in its elegance and utility.

Someone, she thinks. Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader.

She remembers first grasping the hilt when she found it in the antique chest in Maz Kanata’s castle. It had called to her. No, that wasn’t right. The crystal had called to her. Just as the crystal had answered her summons in the forest on Starkiller Base. Just as the same crystal had refused to obey either her or Ben as they tore it in half in Snoke’s throne room.

Grasping a pair of long nosed pliers, Rey removes the broken halves of the kyber crystal and lays them on the desktop. They shimmer a pale and iridescent blue, and Rey can hear the gentle singing that surrounds the two halves. It’s a seductive tune, and it seems written just for her. And it’s then that she understands finally that this isn’t Anakin Skywalker’s crystal; nor is it Luke’s. It’s hers. As the crystal had chosen Anakin, and later chose Luke, it had chosen her.

But it would not choose between her and Ben. It broke rather than make that choice. And the two halves, apart, could never be what they were meant to be. Separated, they would remain as they were now: inert, alone, and purposeless.

She cups the two halves in the palm of her hand and closes her eyes. The broken crystal has no visions to show her, but she does feel echoes of the past: victories and losses, sorrow and elation, pain and longing. And, sheltered deep within, a chilled numbness cocooning the remembrance of atrocity.

And all at once the happiness she had felt just hours before bleeds away. She had been able to find Ben in the darkness, and bring him to her. She had been able to help him find some shimmer of hope, and, in doing so, had restored her own. But he was no closer to coming home, and she hadn’t really considered what that homecoming would be.

She puts the crystal halves down on the workbench and retrieves a small toolbox from a storage bay. She empties out its contents into a larger container, making a mental note to apologize to Chewie later. Unfolding a cloth rag, she gently wraps the lightsaber and the broken crystal, and secures the contents in the box. Latching the lid, she puts the box back alongside the ancient books, and closes the drawer.

Tidying the workstation, she clicks off the light and heads toward the boarding ramp. She disengages the flight lock, punches the release, and the pneumatic pistons hiss as the ramp lowers and the harsh white of the Vedician day momentarily blinds her.

She takes a few hesitant steps, then lengthens her stride. It was time.

She was going to see Leia.

Chapter 8: Kylo

They’d been lying there in the dark a long time. Talking. Ever since they’d collapsed together on the floor. And now a long silence had set in, and they were just watching each other. Her breathing had steadied into a gentle rhythm, and he finds himself transfixed by the way she’s looking at him: calm, serene, contented. He has to combat the disbelief that plagues him even now, even as she’s returning his gaze with an easy familiarity: a disbelief that anyone so essentially good could want to be here, right now, with him.

And it occurs to him that he hasn’t just talked to someone in years. Even then, there had been an uneasiness that colored everything, draining his vitality, and the act of simple conversation had been a burdensome, wearying ordeal. That had been a fatal liability in the world into which he’d been born, and the memory of it still stings. But with her, in this moment, in this quiet place, he feels an unfamiliar peace. The twisted knots that bind him are loosened, and the low tremor of rage that attends his every thought and action seems like a distant apparition, a nightmare half-remembered on waking.

It can’t last, he tells himself. He knows it can’t last. But he wants to believe it can. And at least for now, it’s enough.

She lets out a soft sigh and props up on her elbow. There’s a different look in her eyes. Pensive, touched by worry.

“I’m going to tell your mother,” she says.

“No,” he hears himself say. He spat it out so reflexively that even as she’s replying, he hasn’t yet figured out if he means it.

“You can’t stop me.”

“Rey—“

“I can’t keep this up. She’s going to sense it. She already suspects... something.”

He can see her, his mother. He can picture her in her mourning garb, her silver-gray hair swept into a modest braid. She deserves to mourn and be comforted and be made whole again. And that can’t happen. Because of him.

“It’s better that she think her son is gone,” he says, and the pain nested in those words curls inside him like a tangle of thorns.

“Why?” Her eyes harden and her brow knits. “Because you think it would be better for her to go on as though her husband and son were murdered by some stranger?”

For the first time, real anger begins to build in his heart, and for a few seconds he feels as though it might overtake and consume him. She doesn’t relent, though, staring him down as he rises to meet her glare.

“Yes,” he almost growls.

“That’s not for you to decide,” she snaps back. “Not after everything she’s been through.”

“You mean everything I’ve put her through.”

“No.” She is firm, defiant. “We’re past that.”

He wants to refute her. He wants to rage and thunder. He wants to tear down the foundations of their bond and show her the true meaning of fear. But he looks in her eyes, hard and indomitable as they are, and he knows she’s right. They were past the simplicity of convenient illusions, and the anger that swells in him is leavened by the chill of guilt. As he begins to sink into that cold void, he can feel her responding to his conflict, and the bond shimmers with sudden light as she softens, moving closer to him.

“I’ll help you,” she says, and her voice is almost a whisper, slight and tender. “I meant it then. I mean it now.”

He feels her compassion, and it flows through him like water, warm and welcoming. And he knows she can sense him calming, just as he can sense that she wants to touch him again.

“Anyway,” she says, breaking the silence, “I’m a terrible liar. I need to tell her, and wasn’t going to keep it from you.”

It presents a question he hadn’t considered.

“Can we lie to each other?”

Her response is almost immediate.

“Have we ever even tried?”

It’s then he realizes that it had never occurred to him to lie to her, even when she was his enemy, his prisoner. He had never once felt as though he should favor her with anything but the truth, even when he’d had every reason to want to mislead and confuse her.

“You’ve always told me the truth,” she continues. “Even when it was hard to hear. Now I’m returning the favor.” She sits up, tucking her legs underneath her. “And she deserves to know.”

“Know what exactly?”

“That her son is alive. She’s lost so much.”

He can’t keep looking at her, he thinks. He’ll die if he keeps looking at her, the way her eyes draw him in and hold him captive, and the sad, earnest way she believes in him.

“She loves you, Ben.”

“I— I can’t.”

“You can. You will. If I can accept that my parents literally sold me and left me behind forever,” she breathes hard, determined not to cry, “you can damn well accept that your mother still loves you.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but the words don’t come. And in that moment he is certain there has never been a thing so fearsome and lovely as this creature before him. So he doesn’t say anything. He simply nods, and she smiles warmly, and, to his surprise, he feels at peace.

***

Kylo awakens to the chill and dim red of his chambers. He’d fallen asleep on the floor, a few feet from the wall. Rey was gone. How long he’d slept, and how long they’d spent together, was a mystery. He knows no one would dare to disturb his private quarters. Unless there was a coup. Or a mutiny. And if there had been, he might have company yet.

He is alone. As ever. He strains to sit up, and slowly stands. His joints ache, and the wound on his shoulder throbs and stings. There’s a moment of pure disorientation as he goes to move, and a blood rush to his head knocks him off kilter. But he steadies himself, and the dizziness passes.

He approaches the mirror and his reflection takes form as he emerges from shadow. His pale likeness hovers there, framed by red-tinged black. The image tells the tale: he looks awful. He’s dry now, but his clothes are creased and stiff with ash and sweat. Brownish cakes of dried blood dot his arm in a broken trail from the still seeping gash on his shoulder. And on his neck and chest, long, thin scratches where she’d left her mark.

What had happened between them instead of a vision still swims in his mind. He can still feel her hands, her lips. He can still smell her skin and her hair. More than that, he can feel her, and the soothing warmth of her light bleeds into him even now. And the ephemeral presence of that light makes the dark he occupies all the more stark and bereft for her absence.

The glints and edges of his cold world sharpen into focus, and he is more keenly aware of his isolation than at any time before. But there is a solidity to the energies that weave their way around him. The wound in the Force that always threatened to swallow him up has somehow closed, and he knows if he can only anchor himself to this new strength, she’ll return to him again. And that knowledge makes him bold. It makes him thrill for the promise of the possible.

***

He knows even with a bacta patch, the wound on his shoulder is likely to scar. Just one more to add to his growing collection. He’d bathed, applied a dressing, and put on a simple tunic and trousers. With his boots and gloves on again, he feels more at ease. Even after years of life on a Star Destroyer, the constant press of night, of star fields unattended by a sun, wears on the nerves.

On the Finalizer, and every other commissioned Star Destroyer, the day-night cycles were set to standard time. Coruscant days. Coruscant nights. But Coruscant was thousands of light years from this spot in the dead ocean of space, and the notion of time being standard with no relative point of reference was unnerving to say the least. It had become clear once he accessed his terminal that he had no real idea how much time had passed. He had been in no fit state to have paid notice to the time when he’d staggered into his chambers, unmoored and drifting in a fugue state, just having torn half a deck level of the ship apart. As far as he could estimate, it could have been as much as a full cycle. Twenty-four hours.

Maybe he had missed some violent uprising after all.

He stands, leaving his dim terminal, and takes a moment to consider his chambers. They are sparse and utilitarian, neatly kept, and nearly devoid of possessions. There are no shelves on the walls. There are no ornaments or fixtures. The walls are charcoal. The floors are mirror black. The only interruption to this oppressive sameness, other than the cold white of the wall lights, and the red blinks of instrument panels, is the altar and chair, recessed in a pit, just off the main room.

He crosses to the pit. It’s three steps down, semicircular. The altar sits across from an unadorned chair. A bay of windows curves behind the altar, and Kylo regards the relic sitting atop: the twisted and heat-warped mask of Darth Vader.

Darth Vader, he thinks. Anakin Skywalker. Grandfather.

He remembers the day, in a time that seems to reside in another life, that Snoke presented him with the mask. A legacy worthy of aspiration, and a tale of caution. When he’d first beheld it, he’d felt as though he had finally arrived at his life’s great purpose. Here before him was the shade of greatness. Here before him was a testament to the strength that attends power, and the weakness that undid that power.

He’d spent weeks mimicking the design of Vader’s mask, shaping the molds himself, modifying the breathing apparatus to filter toxins and smoke, poring over each corner and curve to find the elements that would best inspire his enemies to terror. In the end, he had smashed the molds, destroyed every copy, and had had the remnants melted down and taken from his sight. You’re nothing but a child in a mask.

He sits down across from the mask. Its twisted visage scowls disdain. His thoughts drift to Rey, and to her boundless capacity for hope. She believes, deeply, truly, that Ben Solo still lives. But who is Ben Solo? What remains of the boy who sheltered his pain behind a mask? Kylo doesn’t know. And part of him fears that one day she’ll discover that the person she so wants to welcome home doesn’t exist. He fears that once she understands what he’s become, she’ll turn her back, and abandon him to the dark warrens he’s always wandered alone.

He closes his eyes and tries to conjure the vision he was shown when he was brought under Snoke’s tutelage. The grasping horror of command. The control of dominance. Power enough to exile pain. Power enough to banish memory and erase the stain of failure. But the vision resists his call, as it always has. And he suspects, as he has for some time, that, like so much else in his benighted life, the vision was nothing but theater devised by Snoke, just one of many traps lain to ensnare and seize him. That would be where he remained, if not for the pull he’s felt, the pull to the light.

And all at once the cold grip of the past eases its hold on him, and he feels a bloom of warmth close around him. Rey had found him in the darkness, and had brought him to her. She had gifted him with some measure of her hope, and he now held to that bright spark. Even here, in the gloom and menace of these alien chambers, he feels closer to home than he’s been in years. And part of him knows that the home he feels is less a place than a state of being, a light at the end of a long journey, haloed around a desert girl from Jakku.

He rises from the chair, and climbs the stairs, turning to regard the mask once more. It looks smaller than before, and he thumbs the panel at his side, watching as each of the overhead lights blink off, delivering the mask and it’s altar back to the darkness it so seems to crave.

Kylo straightens his tunic and attaches a light cape around his shoulders. He crosses to the main door to his cabin, punches the access code, and triggers the release. The door slides open soundlessly, and the pale, comfortless light of the corridor beyond welcomes him.

He strides out into the maze of passages that make up the ship. He knows now his error, and the shape of his failures. A man should recognize what he’s best at, and how to use it.

It was time to get to work.

Chapter 9: The Princess

Leia Organa sat near the window in her small room inside the Vedic III base. She idly traced her finger around the rim of a half-drunk mug of caf, and gazed into the sky. Milk-white sky, and that planet. Pale blue, like Cloudshape Falls back home. A home that hadn’t existed for thirty-three years. What was once Cloudshape Falls now existed in a thin wisp of gas and vapor that swirled in and through the asteroid belt that once was the planet Alderaan.

She sighed and took a sip of the caf, stifling a scowl as she drank. Vedic III wasn’t home. Nowhere was. But, she thought, there were worse places to die.

“Princess Leia— oh my, is it Princess again? Or General?”

“Leia will suffice, Threepio. What is it?”

“It’s the load lifters, ma’am. I’ve been trying to tell them to move the pallets to the south entrance, but their dialect protocols seem to be malfunctioning, and I believe—“

“Can anyone else handle this?”

“General Dameron informed me that I should bring this matter to you, as he said any further discussion of this issue with him might result in some manner of self-injury.”

Leia let out a loud chuckle.

“I’m confident you’ll figure it out, Threepio.”

Leia looked at Threepio standing in the doorway and could see Rey behind him, a bit off to the side, waiting for the droid to move.

“Rey! Come in, sit down. I was just about to send for you.” She shot Threepio a look that said, unequivocally, You can go. She wondered, chuckling again, if that was included in his six million forms of communication.

“Hello, Threepio,” Rey said sunnily.

“Good evening, Miss Rey. I mean to say, good afternoon. Or, oh dear, I’ll never figure out the day-night cycles on this accursed moon,” the droid said, trailing off as he walked away down the hall.

Rey came in and sat down on the plush chair across from Leia. She shifted a bit as she settled in, and it struck Leia that the girl might not have much experience with cushions. The thought was unbidden and sad, but Leia had been more maudlin of late.

“How are you feeling? You have to know everyone’s been worried.”

“I’m fine. A bit banged up. But fine.”

“You’re pushing yourself too hard. But then, when I was your age, I was dodging blaster bolts and drawing up troop deployments and barking orders at men who’d been in combat when I was a baby. So who am I to judge?”

Rey laughed, smiling her easy smile. But something was amiss.

“I’m sure you have more stories worth telling about single days of your life than I have altogether.”

“Something tells me that’s not true at all, Rey.” Leia lifted her mug and gave her a wry smile. “Would you like some caf? Threepio makes a simply awful brew.”

“No,” Rey said, laughing softly. Then her expression twisted slightly. Worry. Regret. Purpose. “Thank you.”

“Rey,” Leia said, setting her mug down without drinking, “what’s troubling you?”

“I came here knowing exactly what I needed to tell you. And now I’m realizing I don’t have a clue how to begin.”

“Well, I would say, ‘from the start,’ but then I’d be giving myself away as the tired old lady I’ve become.”

Rey laughed at that, but the easiness with which she’d entered the room was gone. There was a heavy weight that adorned her every movement. Leia knew well the price leadership demanded, and that that price was always much higher for women. Add to that the abbreviated legacy left to this girl of twenty by Luke, the entirety of the Jedi mythology and tradition, and the elements were there. Leia was amazed the poor girl hadn’t suffered some kind of breakdown before now.

“Take your time,” Leia said with a knowing softness. “I know it’s not easy.”

Rey let out a trembling sigh. She’s so nervous. What is this?

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you. With any of you. And I need to fix that.”

Leia can sense the confusion in her. The hesitance. The fear that what she has to say will be misunderstood or unwelcome. And the iron resolve that would override those misgivings. What a politician she’d have made. In another time. Another life.

“Maybe I should start by— what was Be— your son like? When he was a child?”

Leia paused. She had definitely not expected that question.

“Rey, what’s this about?”

“Please. I just,” Rey said, meeting Leia’s eyes with a sort of pleading. “I need to know.”

“He was quiet. But thoughtful. And kind. He wanted to be a pilot like Han. He’d tell anyone who would listen. He used to run around our house, back on Chandrila, with a little model X-Wing, blowing up Death Stars.” Leia smiled warmly as she remembered her son, her husband. Rey didn’t respond, but Leia could sense growing sadness. “But he always had trouble sleeping. And he was sad or troubled often. But we were happy. Once.”

Rey drew in a sharp breath, and Leia saw that she had begun to weep.

“Oh, Rey, honey. What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry, I just—“ Rey wiped her eyes and took a moment to compose herself. “Thank you. That— that can’t have been easy.”

“Trust me,” Leia said, placing her hand on Rey’s, “those are my easiest memories. I wouldn’t give them up for anything.”

Rey allowed herself a half smile, pulled her hand back, and absentmindedly brushed her hair behind her ear.

“After Crait,” Rey started, after a few moments of quiet, “when you said you felt Luke pass, that wasn’t the first time. That you’d sensed him. From afar.”

“Oh, my, no. Luke and I were twins. And I could always sense him. Even across the galaxy. Until, well—“

“Could you ever hear him? Or see him?”

“See him? No. But, hear him? Yes. At times. Just a soft voice in my mind. But never more than a few words, or just my name. And I could respond. More or less.”

Leia thought back to the first time it had happened. Cloud City. Leia, hear me. Since then, Luke’s gentle, sage voice had accompanied her through many struggles. But not for a long while now. Not since the temple fire. And now, never again.

“When I talked to you on D’Qar, before leaving for Ahch-To, I told you that,” Rey paused here, swallowing, “your son had interrogated me. Read my mind.”

“Yes, and that you fought him off. I remember.”

The girl didn’t continue. She seemed even more hesitant than before. Leia had been dreading this talk, but she knew it was coming. Ben had followed a legacy she’d intentionally kept hidden from him, and it was left to Leia to repair the damage where she could.

“Rey, when I was about your age, I was taken prisoner. And tortured for information. By my own father. I know what it can do to you. Just know I’m here. And I’m listening. And you can stop whenever you need to.”

“Oh, this isn’t— I need to stop circling around it and just—“

Rey shifted on the cushions, and Leia almost offered her a different chair. But the girl found a suitable place to rest, centered herself, and started again.

“What I didn’t say is that when I was in his mind, and he in mine, something unlocked. And that door stayed open. And then we were fighting, on Starkiller, and he said he wanted to teach me. About the ways of the Force.”

“During your duel.”

“Yes. But then that door opened a bit wider, and I was able to use that to beat him.”

“I’ve watched you fight, Rey. I bet it was something to see.”

Leia saw Rey’s expression brighten, and she responded with the measured excitement of a someone admiring a sabacc opponent.

“Oh, he was wounded already. If he’d have been— well, I got lucky. He’s really an excellent fighter. I caught him off-balance and hit him with an upswing, and he’s got this scar now right across—“ Rey was moving her hand diagonally over her right eye, displaying the placement and attitude of the scar. She stopped, and looked at Leia sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m talking about maiming your son.”

“We’re all soldiers in this, Rey,” Leia responded with a reassuring grin. “You. Ben. All of us. And he had it coming.”

“Right,” Rey said, and looked down at her hands. “When I went to Ahch-To, I found Luke. But he didn’t want to talk to me. He tried to send me away.”

Leia hadn’t expected that. She knew Luke would have been unlikely to welcome company, especially after self-imposed exile, but she wouldn’t have sent Rey to find him if she hadn’t been sure Luke would come back right away once told of the severity of the need.

“But something convinced him to give me lessons,” Rey continued. “About why the Jedi had to end.”

“Luke said he wanted the Jedi to end?” Leia heard her voice rising, and she stood abruptly, crossing to the open door. She scanned the halls for passersby, and, seeing none, she closed the door and returned to her chair.

“I’m sorry,” Leia said. “Go on.”

“I don’t think he really meant it. Not the way he thought he did.”

“But why? Because of Ben?”

“Leia,” Rey said quietly, “he made a terrible mistake.”

The door whooshed open, and Threepio came clattering back in.

“Princess Le—“

“Threepio, I swear, if the base isn’t under attack—“

“Not at all, ma’am. It’s just the load lifters! They’re not speaking an incorrect dialect at all! Their protocols were merely—“

Leia lifted her hand and Threepio was flung back into the hallway. She flicked her fingers and the door slid closed, and the lock engaged. Rey looked on, her mouth hanging open.

“Please,” Leia said, clearing her throat. “Continue.”

“Luke said he’d felt darkness growing. In Ben. And so he went to him. To his room. While he slept. And he looked into Ben’s mind, and saw death. Destruction. Suffering.”

Rey grew quiet. Leia could tell she was trying to gauge how far to go before stopping.

“Go on. Please.”

“Leia, he wasn’t thinking. He panicked.”

“Rey. What did Luke do?”

“He ignited his lightsaber. And Ben woke up. And it was too late to take it back.”

Leia couldn’t help it. She let out a short cry and quickly covered her mouth. Oh, Luke. Oh, what did you do? Leia’s hand moved from her mouth to her temples, and she massaged them lightly, trying to think. Rey was telling the truth. That much was certain. Oh, Ben. Oh, my poor boy.

“Wait,” Leia lifted her head gradually, her hand dropping, “Luke just told you this?”

“No. There’s— there’s more.” Rey took a deep breath. “There’s a lot more.”

“I— I need a minute.”

The memories flooded back to her, and she was almost overcome by them. Ben flinging plates and ornaments against the walls with his mind when he threw tantrums. Ben carefully studying starship schematics. Ben trailing around after Han, saying, “Dada, pick me up!”

Ben sitting in his room, crying at night. Ben begging to go with Han and being left behind. Ben boarding the Falcon with Han and Luke and Chewie. Ben never coming home.

Leia straightened, cleared her mind, and made herself return to the here and now. Rey sat across from her, patiently waiting. The girl looks so familiar. As if I’ve always known her.

“All right. I— go on. Tell me everything.”

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

Leia nodded.

“I told you that something had unlocked. Between Ben and me. The morning after Luke agreed to teach me, I woke up, and he was right there.”

“Luke?”

“Ben.”

“Right there. On Ahch-To.”

“No, he was wherever. The Supremacy, I think. He was sitting in a medical bay getting his face stitched.”

“Was it a vision?”

“No. It was like he was there in the room with me. As real as you are.”

“I don’t under— no, nevermind.” Leia knew better than to question the Force. It did what it pleased. “What did you do?”

“Oh, I panicked. I tried to shoot him. But it didn’t hit, just knocked a hole in the wall.”

Rey stopped, perhaps considering how ludicrous her story was sounding. But Leia motioned with her hand for the girl to continue.

“Anyway, we figured out rather quickly that he could see me, and I could see him, and we could talk to each other, but no one else could see or hear what we were.”

“So, my son was— was he trying to frighten you, or—“

“He wasn’t doing it. Neither was I. It was just happening. And it would end as abruptly as it started.”

“So, it happened more than once.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s still happening.”

Leia could see Rey was taken aback by that leap of deduction. The younger woman knit her brow, and her lips drew into a tight line.

“It’s— not exactly. It’s— oh, kriff it, why can’t I just—“

“Rey, can he sense where you are? Could he be watching us?”

“Oh, I’ve done this all wrong.”

“Rey, please, it’s important. If he can—“

“Leia,” Rey said with a firmness she hadn’t used before. She looked Leia in the eyes, and didn’t waver. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then, please, please let me explain.”

Leia absentmindedly lifted the mug of caf and was about to drink when she caught the scent of the sour brew, and thought better of it. Rey had a different sort of demeanor now. Leia could feel her resolve strengthening, as though she were drawing on some unseen wellspring of power to bolster her courage.

“When we first started talking, I only wanted him to go away. But he asked me if Luke had told me what happened at the temple. And I sensed he— he was in pain.”

“Ben.”

“Yes. So, I asked Luke. I didn’t tell him I was seeing and talking to Ben. I thought if he knew, he’d tell me to leave, and never agree to teach me anything. But I asked him what happened. And Luke told me he’d gone to Ben to confront him, and that Ben had turned on him.”

“That’s it? That’s all he said?”

Rey nodded. Leia could sense the hurt in her. The hurt at having been lied to by Luke. The hurt of not having been trusted yet again.

“Ben appeared to me later. Oh, appeared isn’t the right word. We were... connected... later, and told me his side of the story. Or, maybe, showed me is more accurate.”

“He showed you?”

“He told me, but I could almost see it. Kind of like a vision. And I felt how afraid he was, how betrayed he felt. He wasn’t lying.”

“Did you confront him? Luke?”

“Yes, but—“ she said, before muttering frustratedly, “oh, I have to do this right.”

“I’m sorry. Rey, if you need to take some time—“

“No. No, I need to get this all out. It’s— it’s been—“

“A burden. I know.” Leia made sure Rey could see the sympathy in her eyes. “I know.”

Rey gathered herself again, and resumed.

“I’d sensed a place beneath the island during one of Luke’s lessons. It was a dark place.” Her eyes flicked up, and she said, “You know what I mean by Dark.”

“I do.”

The cold emptiness. The terror that gripped her in the mirthless watches of the night as she lay in bed, feeling Ben turn and kick in her womb. The whispering promise of power, and the illusion of being able to hold onto it.

“But it called to me, and after talking with Ben, I went there. And I followed the call to where it led. And what I found there—“

“It showed you something you didn’t want to see.”

“Yes.”

“Go on. If you can.”

“I went back to the hut I’d been sleeping in. And I felt— I felt so, so alone.”

Loneliness, which for this girl had been the hallmark of her short life, had never touched her so keenly as in that one moment. Leia felt for the briefest of instants the depth of Rey’s desperate solitude, and she knew immediately what had happened next.

“And you reached out. To Ben.”

“Yes,” Rey confirmed, not bothering for a moment to pretend otherwise. “And I told him about the cave. And he listened. And he told me that I wasn’t alone. And I— we were able to touch.”

Leia had never heard of such a thing. It seemed impossible. Even Luke, who had been more powerful than any Jedi Leia had ever heard of, had died holding a projection of his physical form across the galaxy. But he couldn’t touch anything. Everything passed through him as though he were a ghost.

“Just fingertips,” Rey stressed, mimicking the act with her hands. “But real touch.”

“Through the Force,” Leia said, unable to suppress her disbelief. “Across the galaxy.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure. It wasn’t a trick, or—“

“No. I’m certain.”

“Can you tell me,” Leia began, considering how to word this right, “and if you don’t want to, you don’t have to answer: how, or, I guess, why, you were touching?”

Rey squirmed again in her seat, and Leia could see a light pink begin to flush her cheeks.

“I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. I guess it’s that— I wanted to touch him. I didn’t want him to be alone either.”

Leia sat astonished. She tried to suppress it, to act as naturally as she could. She’d had more training at that than anyone. But this. This was something beyond anything she could have thought.

“I feel like I’ve said something I shouldn’t,” Rey said quietly, hesitation creeping back into her voice.

“No, no. It’s just— a lot to take in.”

And a realization, blazing and sure, shot through Leia, and her voice was little more than a whisper:

“You haven’t once called him Kylo Ren.”

“It’s not his name,” Rey responded immediately.

“Rey.”

“Now I really feel I’ve said something I shouldn’t.”

“You love him.”

And whether Rey knew that she had stopped breathing, Leia couldn't tell.

Chapter 10: The Tinkerer

Notes:

Okay, guys. We’re headed into uncharted waters here. I invented my first new planet in Chapter 6, and here in Chapter 10, we get our first new major character. I hope she meets your standards.

Hux didn’t make a habit of leaving the Finalizer. He preferred to remain visible on the command deck, or pacing the walkways and raised platforms of the bridge. He remembered his father always thundering about how a leader ought to be attended by the trappings of command at all times, and to be sure those trappings were ever on display. Ironic, Hux thought, that he should have died in bed, alone.

Hux had ordered the command shuttle to remain docked in the hangar. He, Captain Peavey, and a detail of stormtroopers were in the belly of a troop transport, heading to the rendezvous point Hux had arranged only hours before. He knew it was important when meeting with these mercenary vagrants to be flanked by a vigorous show of force. That’s all these people respected: power, exercised and undisguised.

“Does this one have a name, Captain?”

“Vyada Nil, sir.”

“What’s our intelligence on— him? Her?”

“She seems to be some kind of assassin for hire. From what we understand, she’s a trophy collector of sorts.”

“Ah,” Hux sneered. “Wonderful. Another hobbyist.”

It seemed the galaxy was overrun with every variation of soldier of fortune seeking to play at kingmaker. Bounty hunters, Hux had discovered, came in every conceivable permutation, and each had seemed more dubious and unimpressive than the last. But the search continued, and Hux was becoming adept at casting a wider net. This time, though, the net’s edges had proved to be wider than he assumed the ocean to extend. That, on its own, merited personal review.

Ever since Ren had issued his decree to the high command that the Jedi girl was his personal concern, and that no bounty was to be issued, Hux had set to correcting that particular error. Of all the self-indulgent twaddle doled out by the new Supreme Leader, the excuses he made for the murderer of his predecessor were the worst. He’d made an excellent show of it, standing at the council table, roaring about hallowed codes of combat and personal honor. But in the time since, Ren had lifted not a finger nor overturned the slightest pebble to find her. Hux’s sneer hardened into a grimace as he imagined Ren kneeling in his chambers before that hideous mask, scrying the stars to divine the girl’s whereabouts.

Perhaps that was what had kept Ren sequestered in his cabin for an entire day cycle. The thought of it was both highly amusing and maddening, and Hux’s hands balled into tight fists at his sides.

The troop transport shuddered to a halt, and the exit ramp lowered. The twenty stormtroopers Hux had selected filed out ahead of him and Peavey, and he strode out, displaying his most practiced rendition of regal bearing. A leader must be seen leading, after all.

The new shipyards were truly impressive, Hux thought as he stepped out into the cold light. Here, with the shielded docking hangar open to space, the mirrored black of the floors seemed a continuation of that void, reflecting the star field that stretched in every direction. This particular shipyard had been selected for its status as a pre-commissioned facility. Though finished, and ready to house the assembly equipment and workers required to build a Star Destroyer (or any other vessel), Hux insisted that each facility be given its due ceremony, and this shipyard had not yet been granted its mandate by the general. It was just as well. Privacy had its merits, particularly when it came to the business at hand.

Having descended the ramp, Hux was startled to see the hunter’s ship had already arrived, and sat across the hangar. It was a vessel unlike any he’d seen before: a sleek matte design, with peculiarly shaped wings, and, Hux thought, a rather ostentatious array of unnecessary spikes and bladed edges affixed to it.

“How good of her to arrive early. A punctual vagrant. Imagine that.”

“As you say, sir,” Peavey said, waiting a half beat before adding, “Though I do wonder how she managed to slip our shields.”

The observation caught Hux off guard. All the other hunters had either insisted on clandestine meeting locations that were dismissed out of hand, or had been escorted in by TIE detachments under the auspices of salvage or law enforcement. It hadn’t occurred to Hux that the ship across from them had dropped out of hyperspace, navigated the flotilla’s patrols, and successfully mimicked First Order docking procedure, stolen a code that was changed hourly, or had hacked and bypassed the shield itself. It was impressive display of infiltration, but the very act of it turned in Hux’s guts like a knife. These oversights would have to be addressed.

Hux was beginning to wonder if this was all some sort of elaborate ruse when the boarding ramp of the hunter’s ship opened. There were no theatrics; no plumes of steam or smoke, no parade of retainers or hired supplicants, just a ramp, and a very tall woman, armored and masked, walking down it with long, deliberate strides. 

As she approached, Hux became aware that she was not just tall; she was towering. Taller than Phasma had been by at least a head. Her armor was made up of some kind of pewter colored chitinous plate, segmented and gleaming. Between those segments were plumes of red-violet cloth from a loose tunic that would have been a flowing robe if it were not constricted by the armor. It all culminated in a hooded cowl shadowing the hunter’s mask, which Hux saw resembled the dark masks worn by Snoke’s Navigators, only longer, ornamented by delicate black filigree, with menacing violet lenses shaped like disaffected, unblinking eyes.

The hunter came to a stop, alone, twenty feet from where Hux and Peavey stood. What Hux initially thought were ornaments on her belt became suddenly apparent. Lightsabers. He could hardly control the urge to roll his eyes. When Emperor Palpatine conducted the Great Purge, hundreds of lightsabers had been confiscated, stripped of kyber, and scrapped. But a few housings and hilts invariably managed to find their way into the pockets of troopers and disposal techs. Now every up-jumped local tough with a plastene helmet thought he could secure a bigger bounty by having one prominently displayed on his belt. 

Nil had four. And something that looked like a spiked baton hanging from her hip. No blasters. Maybe Hux had been wrong about there being no theatrics.

“So good of you to come,” Hux shouted.

Nil did not betray any sign that she’d heard Hux at all. Hux sighed, and took a few steps forward.

“Consider yourself a guest of the First Order. I understand you have a trade to ply.”

Nil remained unmoving. Hux looked back at Peavey, who responded with a shrug.

“Typically, bargaining or a demonstration is in order,” Hux said, his voice oozing contempt.

The hunter turned her head toward her ship, barked a command in some guttural alien tongue, and turned back to face Hux. From the ship emerged two battle droids, colored black and red, heavily modified. In fact, Hux was sure he’d never seen any models quite like these. Nil removed two of the saber hilts from her belt, and casually tossed one to each of the droids. She turned to face them and unslung the baton. She barked another command, and the droids ignited the sabers and rushed her.

The lightsabers were real. And they were red.

The droids moved in swiftly, closing to pincer distance, and Nil dodged away from attacks by each droid. She spun to the side and fired a sonic emitter that screeched when it hit the ground, and Hux could feel the wave as it thudded through his chest. The droids staggered, but continued their advance. One of them brought a blade down, aimed at Nil’s head, and she dodged again, leaning back on her heels. This exposed her to the other droid’s attack, which Hux was sure would cleave the hunter in half. But she activated some kind of pulse through her arm guard, and when the saber blade impacted it, it extinguished. Nil swung around with her baton, and with a fiery buzz, another red blade ignited, and the hunter sliced the droid from shoulder to hip, spinning through the momentum of the cut to block the remaining droid’s blade as it threatened to run her through.

The blades clashed as Nil dueled the droid, and Hux, Peavey, and the assembled troops looked on, slack-jawed. Hux had seen this kind of combat before, from Ren, and he kept expecting the hunter to extend her hand and send the droid flying, or to close her fist and crush its breastplate, but no such power manifested. Instead, Nil locked blades with the droid, and fired four small thrusters mounted somewhere in her armor. The thrust pushed the hunter back from the blade lock with such a sudden burst that the droid keeled forward as the blades separated. Nil stopped her momentum with a timed reversal of the thrust flow, planted her feet, and brought her saber’s blade through the staggering droid’s head.

Without a word, the hunter clipped her strange saber hilt to her belt, and stooped to retrieve the others from the wreckage of the droids.

“Well,” Hux said, his ears still ringing, “you certainly made your point.”

Nil secured the other sabers to her belt, pulled back her cowl, and removed her mask. Hux recognized right away that whatever imposing humanoid species Supreme Leader Snoke had belonged to, this hunter did as well. Her features were severe, but unblemished and youthful in comparison to Snoke’s decrepitude. Her eyes were dark— almost black— and she had a shock of steel gray hair, cut short.

“I assume you received our intelligence,” Hux said.

“I did,” Nil responded. Her voice was deep and smooth.

“Real lightsabers. I must say I’m impressed. Most of you lot are all show. Wherever did you manage to find them?”

“The Empire is bountiful,” she responded.

“Of course, of course,” Hux said, making a point to keep his distance. “Bountiful, and no more. The First Order is all the Empire was meant to be, and if you can give it what it requires, the Order will be quite generous.”

“Not that Empire. But such is not your concern, nor our business.”

“Quite,” Hux replied, still puzzling over her response. “You’ve displayed your proficiency in combat. Against droids, but it’s sufficient for my purposes. Can you do it? Kill the Jedi girl?”

“Yes.”

“Direct. I like that. Name your price.”

“You assume I will agree to carry out your bounty.”

Hux squinted with confusion. “Was there some miscommunication? We offered a contract. You answered. Either accept and name your price, or board your ship and take your leave.”

Nil closed the distance between herself and Hux in two strides. The stormtroopers shouldered their blasters in response. Hux raised his hand to stay their fire. Nil stood over Hux, her black eyes glinted with cold white.

“You are small,” she said calmly, holding his gaze. “And a liar. And will seek to betray me. But I will accept your bounty.”

“And why, might I ask, would I still offer it? Why should I allow you to leave here after that insult?”

“Because the girl you seek is no Jedi. And the boy who sits your throne is no Sith. And you’re running out of time.”

Hux’s eyes darkened and went flat. 

“Captain,” Hux called over his shoulder, “take the men back to the transport.”

“General, don’t you think it would be wise—“

“Do it,” Hux spat.

Peavey nodded to the squad leader, and the stormtroopers turned heel and marched back to the transport. Peavey followed, casting a glance back to the general as he climbed the ramp and disappeared inside.

“Let’s talk, then,” Hux said, his voice lower.

“Yes. Let’s.”

“I take it you were acquainted with Supreme Leader Snoke.”

“He was known to me,” Nil said, the smoothness of her voice now roughened and cold.

“Are you one of them?”

“Are you asking if I use the Force?”

“If that’s how you refer to it.”

“No,” she said, and the darkness that tinged her voice struck Hux as far more dangerous than anything he’d seen her do against the droids.

“And Kylo Ren? Is he known to you?” Hux asked, his voice hushed.

“He is a pretender to a legacy he does not deserve,” Nil said, drawing to full height, “and the inheritor of a title sired by a criminal.”

“Are you some kind of zealot? An inquisitor?”

“I am a huntress. Just as you are a coward and a thief.”

Hux bristled. He considered this creature, who seemed to know far too much. Who seemed to possess abilities that more than qualified her for the task he needed done. And who was possessed of the lunatic desire to raise his ire when she should have been at his mercy. He thought for a moment about ordering the transport’s cannons to fire on her and her ship. But a panic rifled through his mind that she might know something he didn’t. And that couldn’t stand.

“Name your price,” he said, his eyes cold and lifeless.

“The pretender’s lightsaber.”

Hux’s lips drew into a tight, thin smile.

***

The transport approached the Finalizer, and as the pilots began the docking procedure, an alert blinked across the screen where Peavey sat.

“General,” Peavey said.

“What is it?”

“Someone’s accessed your personal terminal.”

“Let me see that.”

Hux leaned over Peavey and peered at the screen. And an icy chill spread through him.

Ren.

Chapter 11: The Princess

“You love him.”

And whether Rey knew she had stopped breathing, Leia couldn’t tell.

Leia regarded this kind, sad, lovely girl in front of her. Rey didn’t speak a word to refute Leia, and Leia immediately wished she hadn’t said it. She didn’t know. Not until now. Of course she didn’t. You didn’t either, when it was you. Leia could see Rey had remembered how to breathe, and could almost hear the poor girl’s heart hammering in her throat, and she wanted to offer her some word of reassurance, but all that would come was:

“But— how—“

“When we touched,” Rey tried to slow her breathing and closed her eyes for a moment. “I saw his future. I know now it was just one possible future. But, what I saw—“ She paused, and looked Leia in the eyes, and said, with a clarity and knowledge Leia found unbelievable, “He’s still in there, Leia. He’s still Ben. He— he still can be.”

“Can you tell me what you saw?” But before Rey could begin, whether it was to tell her the contents of the vision, or to kindly explain why she couldn’t, Leia waved her hands and shook her head, saying, “No, wait. Don’t. The vision was for you. The Force showed you for a reason.”

She had spoken to Luke about seeing the future before, in moments when she doubted her judgment, or when she worried for Ben, or when idle thoughts carried her to yearn for the comfort of certitude. He had always cautioned that the future was always in motion, and that trying to see it would typically result in leading you to destroy that future.

“Luke,” Leia said, breaking the silence, and the churning of her thoughts. “You said you confronted Luke.”

“Oh. Right.”

Rey shook her head, obviously still a little unnerved.

“Luke walked in on us. On me and Ben. In my hut.”

“Just barged in.”

“He saw us together.”

“I thought no one else could—“

“I think it’s because we were touching.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, I may have hit your brother over the head with my staff. And threatened him with a lightsaber.”

Leia laughed, long and loud.

“You attacked Luke Skywalker,” Leia said, gasping for air, “for walking in on you with a boy.”

“I— that’s not really—“ Rey had flushed a very noticeable red at this point.

“No, I’m impressed,” Leia managed, still shaking with laughter. “It’s— oh my.”

“I— I was angry.”

“I can relate,” Leia said, calming herself and smiling.

Rey took a breath and continued.

“Luke told me Ben was telling the truth. About the night at the temple. And that he’d wanted to take it back right away. But Ben pulled the roof down on his head. And you know the rest.”

The smile drained from her face.

“That I do.”

The holo communications. Luke, who couldn’t even contact her, but only recorded a message. Luke was sorry. But not sorry enough to face his failure. Oh, Ben. What did we do?

Pieces were falling together in Leia’s mind. She could almost see it. Rey telling Luke about the vision. I’m sure he loved that. Luke telling Rey to be careful of trying to tell the future. Rey storming off anyway. But why?

“Is that when you went to the Supremacy?”

“Yes.”

Rey’s response was searching and cautious, and Leia knew she was most worried about having kept this part from the Resistance. But Leia could also sense now why Rey had done it, and why she hadn’t spoken of it until now.

“For Ben.”

“Yes.”

“To help him.”

“I— yes, to help him.”

“Does Chewie know?”

“Please don’t be angry with him. He only knows I told him to drop out of hyperspace long enough for me to launch myself in a pod from the Falcon.”

“You got into one of those coffins,” she scoffed. “Those stupid things that say ‘Property of Han Solo, Please Return’ on the side. And launched yourself toward the First Order’s flagship. For Ben.”

“It does sound a bit mad now that I hear it repeated back like that.”

“It does at that. But go on.”

“I don’t know what I expected, really. He was there to meet me. He’d felt me approaching. Like I’d felt him. He dismissed the guards and took me to Snoke.”

“I have a feeling I’m about to hear a very different story from the First Order’s official line.”

“I told Ben about my vision in the lift. And I knew something had changed. And he did too.”

The way she talks about him. As though she knows him. Really knows him.

“Snoke—“ Rey began, swallowing hard, “he taunted me, and told Ben and I that he’d joined our minds to trick us. To lure me. So Snoke could—“

“Wait. I thought you said the,” Leia paused searching for the right word, “bond between you and Ben was unlocked before you started, well, seeing each other.”

“I— I’ve thought about that a lot.” Rey took a few seconds before repeating, “A lot.”

“Luke always told me to let go and trust my instincts when I couldn’t tell up from down. ‘Search your feelings,’ he’d say.”

“I’ve done that. I keep doing that. And I think that Snoke sensed something had opened up between us, and he wanted to use it to his advantage.”

“He knew you’d come for Ben. That if he pushed you together, you’d—“

Rey stopped and stared at Leia with a sudden wonderment.

“I think so, yes.”

“If you don’t want to talk about what happened in there—“

But Rey continued. Leia could see she was determined to finish this. To get everything on the table. She’d carried it alone for too long.

“Snoke told me he was going to pull Luke’s location from my mind, and then he was going to kill me. But it was the way he said it. ‘I will kill you with the cruelest stroke.’”

Because what crueler stroke could there be than to be killed by someone you love? Leia reached out and put her hand on Rey’s shoulder. Or killing someone you love.

“And then he tore into my mind. Ben had looked in there before. Without permission, yes, but I didn’t have any notion how gently until—”

Rey trailed off, and Leia sensed memories of panic and pain.

“When Vader— my father— had me captive, he tried to pry into my mind. He was most certainly not gentle. But he also was more interested in conventional torture, so I didn’t have to endure it very long.”

Impressive. But you cannot hide forever. Sometimes it was all she could do to banish thoughts of Vader from her mind. The sinking claws, grasping, scratching at every scrap. That vicious mask. The cold indifference. The cruelty. And that was my father. And Ben’s grandfather. And I couldn’t bear to tell him.

“It didn’t take long to find what he needed. Snoke had taken my lightsaber, but I tried to summon it to my hand anyway. That,” she said, idly rubbing the back of her head, “did not work.”

“What was Ben doing during all this?”

“Kneeling. Waiting.”

“Of course.”

That was the Dark Side. Submission. The whirring of the droid’s hover motor. The prick of the needle. The burning. And the towering figure above her. Yes. Submit. Give yourself to the darkness.

“And then Snoke showed me the Resistance transports being fired upon.”

That brought her back to the moment. Leia rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue.

“Not Poe’s finest hour,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“Well, I snapped. I summoned Ben’s lightsaber and I charged Snoke.”

Leia could just picture it. She could scarcely comprehend the courage or the madness necessary to do such a thing, but somehow it was easy to see Rey doing it. Who is this girl?

“You attacked Snoke,” Leia said, eyes wide with admiration. “The Supreme Leader of the First Order. In his throne room. With his apprentice’s lightsaber.”

“I didn’t really think. I just did it.”

“So you killed Snoke.”

It certainly made more sense than the old devil dying in an explosion. But Rey gave Leia a look that communicated such a complex blend of emotions that it made the older woman question her understanding of the gravity of what she was telling her.

“I never got close to him. He flicked his finger and tossed me, kind of like,” Rey said, and nodded toward the closed door.

“Oh. I guess I’ll have to apologize to Threepio later.” Leia smirked. Or maybe not.

Rey’s voice started to break a bit, and there was a barely perceptible tremor just beneath, an echo of the fear she felt then.

“Snoke made me to kneel and held me in place with the Force. And he commanded Ben to kill me.” Rey was quiet, looking down. “And I really thought he was going to do it. But he killed Snoke instead.”

Time drew to a stop. Leia felt as though the  galaxy had reversed its spin, and her entire world was broken and remade in the span of a few simple words.

“And he told me,” Rey continued, “not then, but, later— he told me that he’d killed Snoke because he’d already given him everything he had: his name, his father. But that he wouldn’t let him have me.”

Leia felt like she should be saying something. But, for maybe the first time in her life, words didn’t come. Rey looked back at her, and they shared a few quiet moments, and Leia could feel the light flowing in and through this girl. She was a blaze in an ocean of gray, strong and soft, fierce and fragile, and Leia thought at once, Of course. How could he not fall for her?

“But,” Leia said, breaking the quiet spell, “he didn’t say that then.”

“No,” Rey sighed. “No, he didn’t. He— He asked me to stay. And rule together with him.”

“Ben. Asked you. To rule the whole galaxy. With him. Together.” Leia had to take a second to let that process, but finished, “And you said no.”

“I said no,” Rey said, with an edge of frustration in her tone. “Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I didn’t actually say anything. I should’ve maybe tried talking to him. But I was afraid— I don’t know. Of a lot of things. So I tried to take my lightsaber back from him—“

“Wait, why did he have it?”

“Oh, I threw it to him during the fight and I guess he still had it in his hand.”

“During the fight?”

“Ah, right, the guards. The ones in the red armor.”

“Praetorians.”

“That’s it. It took them a second to realize Snoke was dead, but they attacked. And they— well, their weapons weren’t just for show. There were— eight of them? But we killed them all. Together.”

And everything fell into place finally.

“And you thought he’d help us. You thought he’d come home. But he asked you to stay with him instead, and you wouldn’t abandon us. And he tried to stop you from taking the lightsaber. That’s why it was torn apart.”

“He didn’t want me to leave,” Rey said, and Leia felt sadness from her, but also a calm resolve, and relief at having shared her secret.

“Oh, Rey, everything makes so much sense now. Everything.”

“I’m so sorry I kept it from you.”

“No, I— I know why you did. But that’s not all. It can’t be. You wouldn’t be here now if that was all there was.” Leia smiled at Rey, who seemed to be searching for words. “You thought Snoke was telling the truth. About creating your bond.”

“I did. But so did Ben.”

“And you’ve been... seeing each other... since?”

“Not— no, it’s— for the last few months, it’s been broken. Or we were both angry. Or hurt. Both, really. So I’d look up and he’d be there, and neither of us would say anything. And the connection would end abruptly. But it was happening, oh, every day? More or less?”

“And you were carrying this alone. You didn’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell? And... something just broke inside me. I don’t know. I felt wrong.”

“The training yard. When you fell.”

“I was training to distract myself. I went too far, pushed too hard. I should never have done that during the day when it was so hot. Or maybe it was meant to happen.”

“You saw him last night.”

“Yes.”

“But more than that.”

“It felt like it was time. I made sure I wouldn’t be disturbed. And I meditated. And I tried to find him. And I opened my eyes and he was there.”

“You don’t have to say anything more if you don’t want to, Rey. I’m not a cantina gossip.”

“No, it’s fine. We talked. For hours. And— I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Did you discuss anything about,” Leia started, and motioned to their surroundings.

“No. Oddly enough. It never occurred to me. And he never asked. Though I did tell him I’d have to kill him if he tried to hurt any of you again. And he said he’d want me to if it came to that.”

“Rey,” Leia’s eyes were bright with tears, “thank you. For not giving up. For having hope.”

Rey offered Leia a relieved smile, but it quickly fell as the hard truths of the situation came into focus. Rey knew that Ben Solo was still alive. She knew that he still had light in him. And now Leia knew, too. But it didn’t change that Ben was still Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the First Order. It didn’t change that Ben had killed Han. It didn’t change that, if he came home, Leia might not be able to protect him from the consequences of his actions. And she didn’t know if it would be right to. And who knows how long I have left?

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Leia said in a half whisper. “I just don’t know. I think— I think we have to keep this between us for now.”

“I agree.”

“Rey, when you see him, could you tell him—“

“He knows,” Rey said gently. “It kills him. And I think he wishes you hated him. But he knows.”

A tear fell from each of Leia’s eyes, and shone in the soft light as they trailed down her cheeks.

“Rey,” Leia started, but held herself back. I can’t burden her with this. I should. But I just can’t. “We— we should talk later. I— I need some time to think.”

Rey stood up, and walked to the door, but paused before opening it.

“Leia, earlier, when you said that I— did you sense that? Through the Force?”

Leia smiled warmly, her cheeks still wet with tears.

“I was young once, Rey. And very much in love. I know what it looks like.”

Rey gave her a slight smile, opened the door, and exited into the hall. Threepio came back in, leaning around the doorframe.

“Excuse me, Pr— Leia. Shall I bring you something more to drink?”

Leia didn’t look at the droid, but only stared out the window, considering the gathering blue-gray of the Vedician dusk.

“Not now, Threepio,” she said softly.

The sun was falling below the horizon. There was no way to stop that, she thought, the setting of the sun. But now, for the first time in what seemed like ages, she believed, truly believed, they would make it through the night. The pale blue gas giant shimmered in the sky, and mist began to hover amidst the sparse vegetation, and Leia Organa almost thought she could see Cloudshape Falls.

Chapter 12: The Pilot

“But, sir! If the load lifters’ binary language circuits aren’t reset to the default dialect, they’ll continue to deliver their loads to the wrong entrances! It would present a serious supply chain interruption and Princess Leia will—“

“Hey! That’s a great idea! You should take this to Leia.”

“But, General, the princess is no longer—“

“Threepio, if you don’t stop talking to me about the damn load lifters, I’m going to kill myself.”

“Well, I never! I’m only ever trying to be of help, the nerve of some people,” Threepio trailed off as he clattered off down the corridor.

Poe Dameron didn’t watch the droid leave; it was easy enough to know what Threepio was chattering about as he disappeared down the hall: a litany of self-pity, imagined slights, and decades of grievances. Why droids were programmed with such irritating idiosyncrasies, Poe would never understand. But maybe that was the point. Maybe droids needed to be more human to keep from making mistakes.

Poe returned his attention to the reports he had been scanning when Threepio came banging his way into the command center, yammering about obscure machine languages. He reviewed them one by one, each telling a similar story: encouraging signs of unrest against the First Order, but little enthusiasm for organized rebellion.

Each of the documents took far longer to digest and approve than he cared for. Being in command was all he’d ever wanted, having grown up on Yavin IV in the company of Alliance war heroes. But the reality of leading was less attractive than its billing. Most days, Poe wished he could just pass off command to someone else so he could go back to piloting an X-Wing full time. Though, he thought, if he was still just a pilot, he’d probably be chafing under command decisions he didn’t agree with, and the cycle would continue.

His job, as it was, had taken unexpected turns over the previous months. Leia had passed command to him much sooner than he would have expected. And the fight he’d expected to be leading was nothing like he’d envisioned. The First Order was no longer as constant a presence in the core systems as they’d been even a month before, and their troop deployments were more scattershot than was typical. It made Poe nervous. The conflict should be escalating. Instead, it seemed like the First Order was in the midst of a controlled retreat.

But it wasn’t like the Resistance was ready for a showdown. The fleet was nowhere near fighting form, constituted primarily of decommissioned Imperial ships, half-junked freighters, two dozen X-Wings of somewhat dubious flight readiness, and ancillary vessels that lacked a cruiser to support. Worse than that, the First Order had been broadcasting to the galaxy that the Battle of Crait had been a total victory, and that the Resistance had been wiped out.

It was a development neither Poe nor Leia had anticipated. Like the Empire, the First Order didn’t typically suffer any kind of defiance, regardless of its size. But since Crait, Poe felt like he was leading a movement in search of a cause. They took every precaution to makes sure they weren’t discovered— Vedic III was chosen precisely because it would be hard to find— but Poe couldn’t shake the feeling that their enemies weren’t even looking for them. And that troubled him more than relentless pursuit.

As he looked around the command center, Poe considered that the First Order might have a point: it was almost like they didn’t exist. What had been a small, but capable fleet had been utterly destroyed after Crait. A private army of two thousand, well funded, with connections in the New Republic, the Resistance had been a serious threat to First Order operations. But, more than that, it had been something Snoke couldn’t afford to ignore because of one very important distinction: it was led by the sister of Luke Skywalker. The last of the Jedi.

Now Luke was dead. And instead of two thousand, the Resistance barely numbered two hundred. And whatever support was coming, it was coming because of the story of Luke facing down the First Order alone, giving his life for the cause, and, crucially, leaving behind an heir to his powers and teachings. And the girl who was meant to be the symbol of their fight might have died in the training yard yesterday. It was a problem he couldn’t afford to ignore any longer.

“Lieutenant,” Poe called across the room, “has anyone seen Rey?”

Lieutenant Connix looked up from her terminal as though she’d been startled awake.

“Uhm,” she started, glancing around, “I think I heard someone say she was going to see Leia.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Poe squinted and pinched the bridge of his nose. He glanced back at the last report he’d read, and an idea suddenly flashed through his mind.

“Hey, Connix, come here a second.”

The young officer, who still kept her hair in tight buns on either side of her head, stood up from her terminal and crossed to where Poe was sitting.

“Yes, General?”

“Cut it with the ‘General’ stuff. It’s me. Poe,” he said with a smile, motioning for her to sit.

“Sorry,” she stuttered, sitting in the chair next to him. “I’ll try to remember, sir— uh, I mean, Poe.”

“We intercepted a coded message on the First Order’s emergency channel. Normally, I wouldn’t be too interested, but this one was picked up immediately by high command.”

Connix crinkled her nose. “That is odd.”

Poe leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

“Yeah. It is. I don’t like it. The First Order codex. Didn’t we keep a record of when D.J. hacked it?”

“Sir, that codex changes hourly. Er, uh, Poe. I meant Poe.”

“But we could use the record as a road map to hack it again.”

“That’s,” Connix began, nervously fidgeting with her hands, “not really how it works. Or, maybe it does, but not the way you’re thinking.”

“So you can’t do it.”

“I didn’t say— I could maybe—“

“Kaydel,” he said, getting her attention.

“What did you call me?”

“Your name. Kaydel.”

Connix stopped fidgeting.

“I know you can do this. I believe in you.”

“A-all right. General. I mean, sir. I mean— damn it.”

Poe gave her a warm smile, and then turned back to his terminal. He was about to power down and head out to the tarmac when he saw Rey through the windows of the command center, passing down the hall from Leia’s room.

“Rey!” he yelled.

She stopped, and looked at him through the window. Poe got up and crossed to the door, leaning around into the hall.

“Hey, I was looking for you. Can we talk for a minute?”

“Sure.”

Rey turned back down the hall, and into the command center. Poe motioned her into he adjoining office, and he followed behind, closing the door.

“What is it, Poe?”

“First off, how are you feeling?”

Rey sighed and crossed her arms.

“I’m fine.”

“Whoa. Sorry.”

“No,” Rey said, letting her hands drop to her sides. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t— thank you for the concern. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Good.”

“You needed something?”

“I just want to get an idea of what’s going on here.”

“Meaning?”

Poe put his hands on his hips and leaned in slightly, trying not to seem overly agitated. He wasn’t sure it was working. And he knew Rey could sense his anxiety, which wasn’t making matters better.

“We’ve been on this moon for over a month. And you’ve been, what? Running supply missions? Reconnaissance?”

“They’re missions that need done. I do them. What’s this about?”

“‘What’s this about?’” he repeated back, letting out a frustrated laugh. “I don’t need you to run supply missions. I have people to do that.”

Rey crossed her arms again, and her eyes narrowed.

“Is there something you want to say to me? Because if there is, I’d rather just have it out.”

“Fine. We’ve been hanging on by our fingertips out here. People don’t even think we exist. We’ve gotten traction mostly because the story about Luke facing down Kylo and the First Order has caught on. But for that to keep up, we need the Jedi Order. And that’s supposed to be you.”

“It’s not just something I can snap my fingers and make happen,” Rey said, her voice rising. “What am I supposed to do? A traveling show where I tell fortunes and make things float?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not supposed to be the one that knows these things. You are.”

“It’s not like Luke left a manual for me with step-by-step instructions.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“Oh, and what do you hear?”

“That you have some Jedi scripture or something. Some texts. Books with information we could use.”

“I suppose you’d like to try reading them, then. Do you think they’re in standard Aurebesh? They’re in some language that’s probably been dead for five thousand years. Not even Threepio could read them.”

Poe had to laugh. C3PO had just been in here complaining about not being able to talk to load lifters because of their accents, and imagining him trying to read sacred religious texts was more than just comedy. It was farce.

“What I’m hearing is an explanation without a plan,” Poe said, trying his best to keep his frustration from boiling over into real anger. He felt less in control than he was accustomed to, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing something to make him more uneasy. “Are you with us? Because I get the feeling that you’re just here because you have nowhere else to go.”

Rey’s expression hardened, but there was real hurt in her eyes. She took a few calming breaths, and responded.

“All right. This is the part where you say you’re under a lot of stress, and you didn’t mean that, and you take that back.”

“No, I don’t think so. You’re the last Jedi. As in the only one. And yesterday, you keeled over like you were a green recruit. What do we do if something happens to you? Huh?”

“Poe. I fainted. It was stupid to train in the heat like that for so long. I grew up in the desert. I ought to know better.”

“That’s not what worries me. What worries me is that you’ve been acting like you’re an engineer. Or a freighter pilot. You’ve been training against droids that don’t have safety protocols—“

“They’re too easy to beat otherwise.”

“That’s my point! Why are you fighting droids at all? You should be out there, we should be out there, taking the fight to the First Order! You should be leading. Instead, you’re out in the training yard fighting droids that wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you when you passed out.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’d beaten them all by then.”

“And what about next time?”

“Who says there’s going to be a next time?”

“I don’t want to have to worry that there will be!”

A silence fell between them, as though some kind of gauntlet had been dropped, and they were both waiting for the other to pick it up.

“Maybe you ought to stop pinning all your hopes on me,” Rey said with a calm resolve. But Poe could see her composure was slipping, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. “I’m doing what I can. I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do. I’m trying to keep myself from losing my mind while I try to understand what the Force wants from me. I’ve got unreadable books and a broken lightsaber and no one to help me.”

Her mention of the broken lightsaber reminded him that she still hadn’t been debriefed about what happened on the Supremacy. Poe’s uneasiness sharpened, and he couldn’t help but feel that she was reading his thoughts right then and there. Rey took a half step toward him, and gestured down toward the corridor.

“If you need someone to inspire your cause, you’ve got her. She’s right down the hall, and she’s twice the woman I’ll ever be.”

“Rey, Leia’s dying.”

“What?”

“Dying. She doesn’t have much time.”

They’d known for weeks. Leia might have known longer. But it didn’t change the fact that the tumors were inoperable. And it didn’t change the fact that radiation sickness was slowly sapping her of her strength. It was anyone’s guess which would overwhelm her first, but both diagnoses carried the same promise: death, and soon.

“When she got blown out of the bridge on the Raddus, she should have died. She didn’t. We were very lucky. But she was in deep space for over two minutes. That kind of radiation doesn’t come without consequences. Leia might be one of a kind, but she’s still only human.”

Poe could see that Rey wasn’t prepared for that news. Good, he thought. Maybe this would spur her to action. And even if it didn’t, at least Poe wasn’t carrying this secret alone anymore. Not that it could be a secret much longer.

“Rey,” he continued, trying to bridge a span between urgency and inspiration, “we don’t have the luxury of waiting. I can’t put together an army to fight the First Order if we don’t have a cause worth fighting for.”

“If you don’t have a cause worth fighting for without me standing in front of you with a lightsaber,” Rey said slowly, and it looked like she was struggling to keep from letting the depth of her emotions show, “then the problem’s with you, not me. I’m not going to rush out and recruit students, or padawans, or whatever, if I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. You’re a pilot. Imagine starting a flight academy when you know how to fly, but not how to land.”

“Listen to me. I’m sorry if I seem harsh. But I have people who count on me. And they look to you as the light that’ll lead us into battle. And you could have died yesterday. Where would that leave us?”

“What do you want? Tell me. What should I do?”

He took a step toward her, his face becoming hard and serious.

“Start doing things because you can do them. Not because someone told you how.”

And that was that. Rey’s expression went cold and blank, her eyes glassed with angry tears.

“Are we done?”

“Yeah,” Poe said, motioning for the door. “I guess we are.”

***

Poe returned to the command center after Rey left, but not before spending some time thinking through exactly what to do about the Jedi girl in his camp. She was an invaluable asset, to be sure. And if she could get with the program, she could be the one thing that would turn the tide.

But she also painted them with a very bright target. Eventually, he was sure, the First Order would come for her. And when that happened, he didn’t know if they’d be able to protect her. More than that, he wondered if it was worth it at all.

He sighed and rubbed his temples, drifting over to where Connix was seated.

“Any luck?”

“Not with the codex, but I did find this.”

Poe leaned over her shoulder and looked at the screen.

“What the hell?”

“I know.”

“Keep this between us for now.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, Poe.”

Poe didn’t respond. What were those structures? And the orbital station? What was the First Order doing on Naboo?

Chapter 13: Kylo

Kylo walks the corridors of the Finalizer with a purpose that hasn’t attended his steps since he was still wearing the mask. The gleaming mirror floors have always made him feel like his every step was shadowed, reflected in the apparition of some other space, dark and distorted. Now, the impression is changed. The reflection is no longer a stalking avatar of his darkness, threatening to reach up and drag him into its abyssal depths. Now it only reflects his will. Now it rises to meet him, and provides the bedrock upon which he will stand hereafter.

The crew, the officers, the soldiers, all of them fear him. He can feel the cold grip of that fear as it flows in and around him. There was a time he would have thrilled at the bone-deep chill of it, when he would have seized the icy tendrils of the terror in the air and used it to amplify his presence and strike onlookers with even greater fear. Now he allows the fear to curl wisps around him, and, rather than seize it, he lets it break upon him like waves upon a shore. He need not arrest the fear he inspires, but he now recognizes the essential futility it represents.

Becoming the thing you fear frees you from your own terror. But it also encloses you in solitude, shackled and fearsome and clothed in misery.

He had decided immediately upon leaving his chambers that the first thing to do would be to call on General Hux. The man was a worm and a schemer, but he was no fool, and Kylo knew that his own months-long absence from the day-to-day business of the First Order had granted Hux an invaluable commodity: time. And Kylo knew that whatever he was likely to discover, it would only represent a tiny fraction of the general’s machinations. Hux had had more than enough opportunities to arrange his tangle of knots. Now it was just a matter of knowing which threads to pull.

He arrives at Hux’s personal suite to find the general gone. In truth, he hadn’t expected Hux to be there; the general was a man who thrived on the illusion of control and the witless obeisance of subordination. And so he could almost always be found lurching about the command deck and the bridge, sneering and preening and barking orders. The guard at the door steps aside for Kylo as he waves him off dismissively and crosses the threshold.

Hux’s personal chambers are somehow even less impressive than the man himself. Everything in the room looks diminished and spent of energy. For a moment, Kylo feels a twinge of sympathy for the man; to be cruel and vicious was to be alone and afraid, and Kylo knew well that Hux was always afraid.

The general’s terminal is simple enough to unlock. Kylo’s privileges as Supreme Leader allow him broad access to the First Order’s security, and, though Hux’s paranoia adds some level of complexity, Kylo is able to bypass it in due course. He understands that Hux will be alerted to his intrusion. Good. Let him come.

Hux’s files are a collection of mediocrities and fictions, but there are patterns to be found. The general has been requisitioning kyber crystals, and particularly larger ones. Cross referencing the cargo manifests, Kylo finds what he’s looking for: an enormous kyber heart, a giant crystal, capable of cataclysmic destruction. Found on Christophsis twelve days ago. And in storage here on the Finalizer.

Kylo manages a slight smile. This was a thread worth pulling.

He senses Hux arriving on the ship. He doesn’t make any effort to leave or otherwise excuse his presence in the general’s chambers. He instead continues to peruse the files, taking note of anything that might reveal another knot, another thread. Hux’s web of mendacities was so convoluted that Kylo wondered if the man himself knew what was a lie and and what wasn’t anymore. But, then, Kylo had been in thrall to dogmas far more poisonous than any the First Order now indulged, and from his vantage, Hux remained a threat, but one that would self-immolate with the right tinder.

“Supreme Leader. To what do I owe this personal visit?”

That was quick. The transit from the docking hangar to the general’s quarters is typically a lengthy one, and Hux must have felt time was of the essence. Kylo stands up from the terminal to find the general looking annoyed and ruffled. The emotions coming from Hux are like a cold wind: hatred, anger, disdain, fear. But unlike usual, Kylo can sense that the fear is diminished, subsumed and folded under. Hate roils inside the general, and where Hux stands in the room feels like a sunken pit in the Force, warped and straining and ready to give way.

And the baser instinct in Kylo wants to see what happens if he were to apply some pressure. Watch as the tethers that hold Hux aloft tear free. Revel in the death-like fear that would take hold as he was swallowed into the riot of demons that wait to prey on all men, lurking just beneath the surface. It’s this part of Kylo that he has always felt commands him, and in the past it has never been about wanting or not wanting to obey its cruel entreaties. It’s been about being able to resist at all.

You can. You will.

“Cut the formality, Hux,” he says flatly as he crosses the room. “I’m spying on you.”

“Kind of you to be so forthcoming.”

“Taken an interest in kyber crystals?”

“Kyber is the interest of the First Order, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo draws in close, his voice tinged with menace.

“I think you want another Starkiller.”

“And I’m puzzled why you don’t,” Hux says, and Kylo is taken aback by the defiance he senses building in the man. Something is fueling him, inspiring him to a grasping, desperate courage.

“You don’t want to rule the galaxy,” Kylo says, his gloved hands closing into fists and unclenching. “You want to take hostages.”

Hux scoffs, and spits his retort.

“And you don’t act like you want to rule it at all.”

“Are you sure you want to follow this line of conversation, General?”

It’s then that Kylo detects a truly dangerous storm of emotions boiling in Hux’s mind. Fear of being discovered. Disgust for Kylo and the Force. Fury at his own helplessness before Kylo’s power. And, giving foundation and shelter to all these: hate, pure and undisguised, securing around his thoughts like a vault.

“Oh, yes,” Hux seethes, “you’re going to threaten me now. What are you waiting for, Ren? You want to choke me? Fling me against a wall? Go ahead. Who do you think has been running things while you play at emperor?  You’d never last a day without me.”

Kylo steps in closer, glowering, and he feels the itch of malice gather in the tension of his muscles. It would be so easy. To curl his fingers. Crush this small man. Make him struggle to draw breath. Watch his eyes grow wide and panicked as his world washes gray and black.

“You want to test that theory?”

The general stiffens, and his ice-blue eyes widen as he braces for the pain.

I’ll help you. I meant it then. I mean it now.

He centers himself, and the light that now warms him, faint and soft as it is, loosens his bindings, and he knows that he can resist. That he can stay his hand. Show mercy. Exercise true power in restraint. He takes a step toward Hux, who flinches visibly.

“Keep me apprised of developments, General.”

Kylo watches Hux’s hate blend into confusion, and can feel that confusion feed back into hate as he steps around the general and strides from the room, back into the cavernous interior of the ship.

***

Anger burns a different shade than fear. In a typical person, unattuned to the flow of the Force, anger is hot, a flame that warps and consumes. In the thrall of the Dark Side, anger burns even hotter, and the rage glows the edges of everything, licks the skin, molten and scorching. But at the center of that heat is a yawning chasm, possessed of a cold so deep and profound that it hardens everything it penetrates. And those things, the things that make up the essential parts of a person’s humanity, harden until they become brittle, unusable, and set to shatter.

It was the reason for the mask. And the shroud of black that transformed him into a ragged shadow. Armor to protect him from pain. Armor to hide the cracks that had formed in and through him. It was only when he’d started to shed that armor that he’d learned the true meaning of pain, a pain that had brought him to the edge of the abyss, and delivered him into the soothing light that promised to heal him.

But now he can only chafe at the pretense of his surroundings. Every shape and surface in this ship, in this fleet, in this idea of a thing he’d given his life to, was infected with aspiration to a legacy unworthy of reverence. How, he wonders, not for the first time, was his grandfather led to embrace this lightless artifice as an ideal to be pursued? How, with the wisdom he was said to possess, did he descend to such depravity? Kylo can understand his own descent, but cannot understand the choice to step into the abyss willingly. For him, there was never a true choice. For him, there was only surrender.

The cargo hold of the Finalizer is like the docking hangars, but with enormous durasteel blast doors where the hangars’ open and shielded entry ports would have been. Kylo walks along row upon row of munitions crates and supply caches, stacked dozens of feet high. Automated load lifters lumber around the facility, but few guards patrol here, and the ones who encounter the Supreme Leader either quickly turn the other way, or are made to forget what they’ve seen with a wave of his hand.

The stormtroopers. Hux had sequestered and decentralized the entire corps. Kylo could see the utility. With Phasma gone, the general had elected for devolution of authority, with company sergeants answerable directly to high command. As Kylo approaches the secure hold, bending the memories and perceptions of the guards to forget his passing, he muses that the troopers’ new independence will be useful. Another knot set to unravel.

Inside the dimly lit hold, Kylo can already sense it: a deep, churning thrum in the Force. The living essence of a kyber crystal is difficult to detect unless it calls to its new master. But crystals of this size were less single entities than a hive of voices, drifting always in the uncharted reaches between dissonance and harmony. This kind of crystal powered the first and second Death Stars, and one like it powered Starkiller Base. Kylo could sense that this one existed somewhere in between the destructive power of those weapons.

Hux wanted a new superweapon. Let him have it. Let him have it and let him burn in the fire he so desperately sought to wield.

Kylo raises his hand toward the crystal, boxed deep within the massive crate. He lets himself flow into and through the crystal’s resonance, taking hold of the bindings that tie the crystal to the Living Force. It is no small task. The crystal’s will is powerful, but it is divided of purpose and mind. Kylo feels himself glide into the crystal’s core, and summons an image of himself in his mind holding to the myriad tendrils of energy that spiderweb through the enormous mass. He pictures himself twisting those bindings in his fists. He pictures himself pulling them down until they are taut and trembling.

And he brings all his will and strength to bear down upon the crystal’s foundations. The kyber shudders, and a howling shriek builds in the Force. Submit. Kylo channels more energy through his will, pushing down, silencing each groaning voice. Tremors go screaming outward from the crystal, blasting through him, tearing at his muscles and joints, pulling at every imperfection creased into his mind. But the crystal’s counterattack is unfocused, panicked, and Kylo shrugs off the barrage. You do not know pain. You will.

The effect is immediate. The crystal abandons its offensive as Kylo begins to surge through the barriers of its strength with waves of hatred. Snoke, towering over him, blisters raised on his skin from cords of lightning. Pain, to strip away your weakness, young Solo. The arena, Snoke leaning in like a debauched brothel patron, the smell of smoke and blood. Kill him and step closer to your destiny. Kill him or be destroyed. Kylo had chosen to kill. He had always chosen to kill. Come home. We miss you.

Energies contort and twist in the crystal’s center, and the voices join in a chorus of miserable discord. Howls and screams descend upon him in a cacophonous torrent. Surrender to the darkness. The shuddering intensifies to a throbbing vibration, pulses of suffering shooting through each crystalline facet of the ancient stone. Your will is mine. Suffer.

Kylo can feel the strain taking its toll on him. He can sense he is close. The crystal is in agony. He need only press forward, summon more pain, channel the anguish borne of a life of weakness, and the hatred searing through his heart toward his tormentor, who still plagues him even in death. The images flash before him. His father, bathed in crimson, his hand gently brushing Kylo’s cheek. His mother, paralyzed by sorrow, sucked into the vacuum of space. Rey, her eyes filled with hope and fear, as he ignites his saber.

Snake. Traitor. Murderer. Criminal.

Monster.

And with a sickening snap, a pale bloom of red stains the center of the crystal. Kylo releases the energies and staggers back, shaking and sweating. He falls to his knees, and screams his frustration, even in victory. He is host to a swarm of poisons. He is the master of nothing. But even as he is racked with furious sobs, he can sense his success. Deep within its core, the crystal is now scarred with a barely perceptible crack.

Chapter 14: Rey

Rey walks the corridors of the Vedic III base awhile before admitting to herself that she has no real purpose in mind. Everything in the base is dusty and weatherbeaten. Not as badly as the battered assortment of equipment hauled onto the Falcon from the Crait mine, but not much better either. The whole operation that constituted the Resistance was touched by a certain chaotic patina, and Rey feels as though she is as scattered as the seemingly random stacks of crates and pallets that line the halls.

Everyone here, the soldiers and the pilots, the engineers and the flight crews— even the droids, it seems— all of them look to her to inspire hope. Part of her wants to be that hope, to draw up to the heights they’ve imagined her to occupy. In some ways, she can sense that she already inspires the men and women who have given their lives over to this cause, and that inspiration, with its warm and insistent pull, is difficult to deny. But in other ways, ways that speak to the part of her that’s still a little girl alone in the desert, the hope she senses they crave from her is something she sorely needs herself, and she is gripped by a whispering fear that she isn’t equal to the task.

Becoming the beacon of hope you always wished to find binds you to a destiny built on others’ expectations. But it also cradles you in a sense of shared purpose, needed and admired and relied upon, even if that purpose is only an illusion.

Straight away after her run-in with Poe, Rey had decided to steer clear of having to talk with anyone in particular. She needed a little time to digest everything that had been said over the last few hours. Her talk with Leia had gone far better than she could have reasonably expected, but Leia was perceptive and clever, and had happened upon insight that Rey hadn’t been ready to hear. You love him. It seemed like the most obvious thing in hindsight. And yet, as she crosses through the doorway from the interior of the base to the darkening flight deck, she is aware of a confused swirl of dread and anticipation that encircles her and sweeps between and around her every step.

If Leia’s revelations hadn’t been enough to knock her off balance, her confrontation with Poe had more than made up for it. His words, accusing and condescending, were in some ways warranted. She hadn’t been doing the things everyone assumed she’d be doing by now. But it wasn’t as if she could tell Poe, or anyone else, the real reason why she’s been stuck in place for months. Even now, she can feel the bright thread in the Force that binds her to Ben, and she resists the urge to grab hold of it, even though she feels as though she’s walking along the lip of a high ledge waiting for the ground to give way.

There wasn’t really an easy way to resolve the issues Rey was facing in regard to her role with the Resistance. Poe Dameron was a man well liked among the rank and file, and he was possessed of a natural inclination toward leadership. But Rey, who never knew him until after Crait, can sense that Poe is not as confident and surefooted as he is so eager to project. His anxious impatience with her during their argument betrayed in him a need for the hope she’s meant to embody to be something more tangible than a promise. And Rey knows well that hope is never more than a promise.

The flight deck is a jumble of dogfighters and transports, freighters and a few bombers that would likely never leave Vedic III. At the far corner, tucked away, but anything but inconspicuous, sits the Falcon, and this is where she immediately feels she needs to be. She crosses the tarmac, the evening mist gathering around her feet, and manages to avoid attention all the way to the ship. She considers for a moment whether this is coincidence, or if her desire not to be seen is somehow manifesting through the Force, and concealing her from the senses of those around her without her really thinking about it. The thought is both frightening and fascinating, and it makes her wonder where the line might be drawn between what the Force intends and what she wants it to do.

She opens the boarding ramp and walks up. She doesn’t close it, knowing that she might be inviting unwanted company, but right now, even though she doesn’t want to talk, she also doesn’t want to feel so closed off and tucked away. The open door is a small concession, and she tells herself it’s so the others can take some solace in her being just a few steps away. But it’s more likely that the clinking din from the flight deck drives away sense memories of the deathlike silence that haunted her nights on Jakku.

Any slight smile that might have touched her lips, arranged there to guard against worried looks or gestures of concern, falls away once she knows she’s out of sight. She’s never felt so strongly a desire to be with another person, while also desperately wishing to be left alone.

So when she senses Finn climbing the ramp, she doesn’t get up to meet him, but she also doesn’t retreat to her room. She stays sitting in the common room, and waits for him to wend his way through the freighter’s corridors.

“Hey,” he says, emerging from around the corner.

“Hey.”

He comes over to the table and sits across from her. His expression is all worry and restraint, and Rey can sense his conflicting purposes. Finn had many defining traits, Rey thinks, but duplicity was not among them.

“Rose told me not to ask how you’re feeling. So, I’m not going to ask how you’re feeling.” He maintains his resolve for perhaps five seconds before his face falls into the familiar look of earnest, innocent concern. “How are you feeling?”

Rey can’t help but laugh, and the smile that breaks across her face is as genuine as any that she’s worn in the past months.

“I’m fine, Finn. But thank you.”

“That was a pretty nasty spill you took out there.”

“It was stupid,” Rey says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I shouldn’t have been out there like that in the heat. I know better.”

“Yeah,” Finn says, and Rey can sense that there are a lot of things he wants to add to that thought, but is thinking better of it. “That’s the same thing I was thinking.”

Finn is thinking that Rey is taking too many chances. He’s thinking that Rey ought to have Rose tune down the practice droids, or reactivate their safety protocols. He’s thinking that Rey ought to take it easy, stop trying to force things, know her limits.

Imagine what you could do.

“Have you been all right? Lately? You seem, I don’t know, distracted.”

Rey pauses a moment, and lets the enormity of everything wash through her. She owes it to Finn, with everything she’s keeping from him, to be honest about this.

“It’s a lot. All of it,” she sighs, her shoulders falling. “It’s a lot.”

She looks up to see Finn wearing a look of hesitance and uncertainty. He truly doesn’t know what to say, and Rey isn’t at all surprised or upset. She wouldn’t know either, in his place.

“I don’t know, Finn. I’m trying to figure all this out. And I know people want me to be something for them, but I don’t know what that thing’s supposed to be.”

“Hey. Don’t worry about all that. Just do what you can do. That’s all we care about.”

“I wish everyone felt that way.”

“Is someone giving you a hard time?”

For the briefest of moments, Rey considers unburdening herself and telling Finn all about her argument with Poe. It might even help. Finn and Poe had always been close, and the change in rank had done nothing to diminish that. It wasn’t beyond the pale to assume Finn could talk to Poe and tell him to lay off, to let Rey do things at her own speed. But Rey almost immediately dismisses the idea. This was something she needed to figure out on her own.

“Oh, Finn, don’t worry. I can handle myself.”

“I’ve never doubted that,” Finn says warmly, without the slightest hint of insincerity. “But, remember. We’re here for you.”

Finn stands up, straightening his jacket.

“I’d better get going,” he says, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I can never remember when sunrise is coming, so I have to schedule my sleep. And Rose gets cold.”

Rey laughs again, and stands up, drawing him into a tight hug. He closes his arms around her shoulders gently, and she feels the light and warmth of his friendship, and finds solace in it. She pulls away, certain she might begin to cry, but somehow, the tears she expects don’t come. And she realizes that the friendship they share is something durable, and has nothing to do with power or destiny or politics.

You did that. Not the Force. Your strength. Your focus.

“Finn. Thank you. For everything.”

He smiles, pats her shoulder, and heads back down the hall. And as he makes his way down the ramp and away from the Falcon, Rey can sense that Finn is no less worried about his friend than before, and, unexpectedly, this fills Rey with a certain measure of peace. Because even if Finn is worried, at least he understands.

***

Understanding is borne of hope. It is the clarity that arises from taking the risk of wanting to know someone, really know them, and having the courage to let them know you. At first brush, that clarity is like a cool wind, brisk and potent, drawing the object of your attentions into sharp relief. But in the whirls and eddies of the Force, the cool and measured outer layers of clarity only form a thin atmosphere, tightly embracing a light imbued with healing warmth. Light that touches every part of what makes a person whole, easing the acceptance of a deeper sense of communion.

It was the reason she had looked closer at all. The reason why she had considered the masked creature in the forest as a man with fears and doubts. The reason why she’d stayed her hand, and granted life to a man who’d just murdered his own father. It was the reason she’d sought to know the depths of his anger, the reason for his hate, the origins of his pain. And it was the reason she chose to look past the monstrous shadow sitting across from her, to see instead a tormented man as confused and as lonely as she. And then she’d touched him, and he’d touched her, and the world was at once wide with the promise of unexplored wonder, and drawn in tight around the two of them, with nothing at all beyond the sounds of shared breath and beating hearts.

And now she finds herself amidst all the things that by right should be his. His father’s ship. His mother’s cause. His grandfather’s lightsaber. And she can’t help but think to her own blighted childhood amidst the wreckage of an empire, scurrying and scrapping through a graveyard with no headstones, daughter to a legacy of ghosts. How, she wonders, not for the first time, could anyone abandon a child to a life in such a place? How, in the midst of mountains of salvage, did two parents decide upon a price for ownership of their little girl? And a bitter chill spreads through her as she wonders how many portions she was worth. Or maybe Plutt deigned to give them credits. Or maybe they accepted barter for drink or stims or another drug of choice.

Rey closes the Falcon’s boarding ramp, and engages the security measures again. She’s through receiving company for the night. She walks back through the ship and arrives, it seems inevitably, at her workbench. She opens the drawer in the storage bay next to the bench and again retrieves the two halves of the kyber crystal. She holds them up to the light, regarding the gentle, pale blue glow radiating from and through the crystal’s facets. She can sense there’s something she’s supposed to do. To repair the crystal somehow. But it seems like madness to even begin to consider how it might be accomplished.

She tentatively rejoins the two halves, turning each piece slowly until she feels that the halves are aligned as they were when the crystal split. The song she heard before is amplified and more pronounced. The crystal, she can feel, yearns to be made whole again. Rey can feel the need of each half of the crystal to be joined with its mate spread through her, and the desperate urgency that attends that need is startling. And a thought takes root in her mind that maybe what she wants and what she’s supposed to do might not be so far removed from each other as she once thought. That thought branches and blooms into a stronger feeling of want, with frantic purpose breathed into it by the specter of loneliness that has been her life’s constant companion.

She glances away from the crystal to the old Jedi books lined side by side in the drawer. The books had called to her on Ahch-To with such a calm gentility, easy and slight and welcoming. But in the time since they’d passed into her possession, they’d revealed nothing but a handful of vague illustrations and pages upon pages inscrutable archaic script. Again, with the books, there was the promise of something she felt she was supposed to do, and, like with the crystal, no hint of aid was forthcoming from the Force.

And here in the dim light of her workstation the struggle and frustrations of what she’s been left to inherit come to bear. She is the symbol of a hope she can hardly comprehend. She is the steward of a legacy lacking context or purpose. She is one half of a broken whole, with no sense or notion of how that break can be healed. But the need, the overwhelming need to find the answer to the puzzle now animates her. It drives her to try to join what can be joined, and to start doing things because she can, not because someone showed her how.

It’s not without a sense of irony that Rey recalls Poe’s rebuke. Poe wants the Jedi Order. But he can’t have it. He can’t have it because it doesn’t exist, and Rey isn’t sure what is meant to rise in its place.

She returns her attention to the broken crystal, its halves still held together by her fingertips. She closes her eyes and lets the light flow through her, sinking into the rushing current of energies that spin and dip around the crystal halves. She feels an instinct, something old and unnamable, calling her to the crystal’s center. But there is no center. It’s been cleaved apart. She begins to picture an image of herself in her mind standing amidst the shorn bindings that once held the two halves together.

She reaches out with her feelings, following the trickles and rivulets of energy out from the crystal’s foundations to each of the countless points of light that dwell within it. And she can feel the song within her as it strains to reach unison. Breathe. Just breathe. The soul of the stone lifts and carries her through its hazy blue dimensions, and she tries to reach to the myriad imperfections that are scattered along the cloven edge. But the damage is too great, and Rey knows that she can’t repair it. She now understands that the resonance longs for the union of two voices, and her light is only one half of an unrealized harmony. The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.

The effect of the realization is gradual. Her thoughts drift away from the crystal’s ice-blue depths, and she finds herself alone in the muted palette of the real. Leia’s insight had riven a comforting fiction that had sheltered her. I was young once, Rey. And very much in love. I know what it looks like. And she hadn’t been able to deny it. Because once she’d heard it said aloud, the truth of it had burned its way into the foundations of her spirit, and she knew immediately that a barrier had given way that would never be raised again.

But while Rey can’t deny the essential truth of Leia’s words, another truth, pervasive and insistent, remains. Rey can see now that she loves Ben Solo. But she also knows that that love is a result of a vision of the future. And knowing that the future she saw in that vision is only one of many possible gives her pause. As he is now, Ben is still in the cold grip of the darkness, and Rey can feel the chill of its embrace as she sits at the workbench, still holding the crystal halves.

The pain she now senses coursing through the bond is alarming, and she drops the crystal halves onto the bench as she doubles over. She tries to respond to it, reaching out for that bright thread, but the waves of suffering blast through her and she is beset by a rush of images. Her parents, telling her to wait and never coming back. Her own voice, weaving a fantasy of a family who would return and save her. Ben, staring up at her as she closes the Falcon door. And the torrent of dismissive voices from the desert:

Girl. Scavenger. No one. Nothing.

But not to me.

The pain ceases, and Rey is released from its hold on her. In the last instant before the anguish she sensed through the bond suddenly snapped, she felt a blaze of light from the other end. And in that light she felt a warmth so pure and strong that it broke the icy descent threatening to swallow her.

In the hours that pass, the light she felt takes a more solid shape, and she rejects the idea that using that light because it’s what she wants to do is wrong. She decides that her failure to mend the crystal is no failure at all. And she decides that what she wants, what she needs, and what she is supposed to do shouldn’t be separate. She closes her eyes, reaches out for that bright thread, and pulls.

Chapter 15: Caesura

He’s cold.

The walk back from the cargo hold had been a blur of walls and edges, and he doesn’t quite remember whether he bothered to mind trick any of the troopers along the way. Not that it matters. Most of them are so frightened of him that they give him a wide berth, and in this instance, that had been for the best.

He’s lying on his bed, still dressed, still wearing his boots and gloves. Bleeding the crystal had been an act he’d decided on in the heat of the moment, and once he’d made made his mind up, he was going to do it, come what may. Only, now that he’s lying in the dark of his room, staring out at the pinpricked black of space, he feels as though he’s skinned and salted a part of himself, and the raw, blistering pain still hovers over him like a poisonous cloud.

There had been a blink of an instant, somewhere there in the breaking of the crystal’s center, that he felt something in the Force that was at once familiar and alien, comforting and disconcerting. What that something was, he struggles to comprehend, perhaps because he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but more likely because he’s just not sure if he knows what it feels like anymore.

And now he lies prone in a closing of gloom, aching for touch, afraid of feeling anything at all.

Maybe that’s why, when he feels it start to happen, he can’t decide how to react. It’s different than any time before. Instead of feeling as though some curtain has lifted or sheared away, he instead feels as though he’s being pulled into the connection, and the sensation, while not unpleasant, is unexpected.

She’s there. Lying next to him. There’s a look in her eyes. Fiery. Determined. Unbowed. He wonders if she could sense him breaking the crystal, and he braces for whatever torrent of invective she’s saved up to inflict on him. But the torrent doesn’t come. Some realization descends on her, and she softens, the fire in her eyes giving way to something he can’t quite place. And when her hands move to his, gently tugging on his gloves, he makes no move to stop her.

***

She pulls on the thread, and, to her relative surprise, the bond connects seamlessly. In fact, she hadn’t even taken the time to sit up from where she was lying on her bed.

As the connection comes to life, it occurs to her that she’s feeling very eager. She starts to understand that with all her thought of need and want, what that is manifesting as in the instant she sees him appear is a need to touch him, to feel him beneath her fingers, to have him to herself. And she knows that the way she’s looking at him must seem mad, but, then, the way he looks at her most of the time feels downright obscene.

But something’s not right. He looks pale, haunted, and the look in his eyes is bereft and terror-stricken. She feels his guilt and shock, and the last time she remembers feeling anything remotely like this from him was in the moments just after he’d killed his father. Then, the bond between them had been newly forged, and she had only perceived a whisper of the pain. Even so, the power of it then had caused her to cry out, and she knows now that she was expressing both her anguish and his own, giving voice to his sudden horror and torment in a way he’d been unable to do.

She feels such an instinct to nurture away his pain. It’s a powerful urge, rooted to the foundations of the universe, and she acts on it, gently reaching for his gloved hands. She takes hold of a finger of each glove, and tugs them off. Her fingers delicately glide over his large hands, and when she moves to thread her fingers in between his, he reciprocates, and leans into her.

***

He feels drawn in, like before. Like every time before. But this time feels more urgent, and the Force is touched by a distinct agitation. The easy flow of energies that closed in around them last time they touched skin to skin is nowhere near as pronounced. Instead, there is an uneven rippling all around them, and he can feel fraying at the edges of the bounds that make up their shared world.

Not that that matters at the moment. She’s woven her fingers in with his, and she hasn’t broken her gaze, and he leans into her embrace. It almost startles him when she moves in quickly to trap his bottom lip between hers, and pulls him into a kiss with something more than comfort in its intent. But his pain has blended into a deeper need, and he presses back against her kiss with a hunger bordering on violence.

Her breathing comes hard through her nostrils as she meets his hunger with her own, and what was sweetness and tender concern has shorn away, laying bare the fire that burned in her when the bond first connected. She’s let go of his hands, and hers are moving up behind his neck, in his hair, and she presses her body closer to his, biting down on his lip almost hard enough to draw blood.

***

Whatever restraint she’d felt before had been utterly demolished. The only thing that existed in this moment was need and the bone-deep ache of lust. It doesn’t matter at all now what reassuring fiction she’d penned before this moment in time to explain to herself the near magnetic pull she feels to be near him. To be closer, and closer, and closer still, and never seem close enough.

She pulls away from the kiss and shoves him onto his back, but it’s less a shove than a tumble, because he’s pulling her with him, his hands closed like vises around her waist. And now it becomes a clear vision of what is supposed to be, even as she feels the contortions in the Force all around them. Even as she feels the connection straining, but not yet collapsing. It only enhances her sense of urgency, as she presses her hips down against him, and she feels the length of him hardening beneath his trousers, and she is possessed of a sudden, almost crazed desire to be closer. Deeper. Joined.

His hands claw up her back and wrench her down onto him, and she doesn’t go to his lips, but buries her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. But his tunic is still on, and the high collar won’t do. She pulls back, sitting astride him, and breathes a single word.

“Off.”

***

She’s on him and over him and pressing down on him, and he feels like he wants— no, needs— to grab hold of her, trap her beneath him, take and possess her. To drink her deep. To drown in her scent. To let the snarling growl coiled inside him come to full throat, and to bare his teeth, close his fists around her slender arms, and lurch to devour.

But instead, she’s trapping him, holding him tightly in place with her thighs, and struggling with his tunic— she obviously doesn’t really know how to take it off— before she spits a curse and uses the Force to pull the buttons apart entirely, laying his chest and neck and shoulders bare. And in one graceful movement, her mouth is on him, and now it’s she who seems driven to devour, and he pulls her down tighter against him, raking his fingers down her back, pushing up the fabric of her tabard, surrendering to the most primal part of himself.

The hallucinatory pulse they’ve fallen into, grasping and reaching, groping and clawing, has drawn his mind away from the black pit in which she found him. But part of him knows, even in this bloodrush of passions, that he’s merely redirecting his agony into an expression of animal intensity, and the raw, unaddressed pain he inflicted on himself mere hours before is being reconciled into this violent drive to make her his, to force her to submit to his will.

Now everything is fair game, but before he can act on the furious urges that are rising in him, he can sense the Force collapsing in on itself around them.

“Can you feel that?” He asks, and she’s still somewhere on his neck and throat.

She lifts her head up, peering around, and he feels a shuddering whirl above and around them as the connection solidifies. He looks at her, wonderstruck, as she dives back in, her breath hot on his ear as she whispers:

“Imagine what I could do.”

***

She’s not going to let the connection close. She doesn’t have to let it. She opened it. She can dictate when and how it closes.

Once she’d whispered his words back to him, something in him had become wild, almost feral, and he’d tried to use the Force to pull her underneath him. But she’d countered and pinned him to the mattress with her own power. And so it goes: the push and pull, the attack and retreat, the refusal to yield and the answer to that defiance.

Now they’re both using the Force without restraint, pushing, pulling, trapping. Their clothes are both unfastened and torn to some degree, and the connection is unstable. But neither of them cares, because this is about power. This is about control. And she won’t lose this contest. She won’t give him his victory. She’ll have him, and she’ll have him as she needs him, and no power of his or any other is going to stand in her way.

It’s just as she’s entertaining these thoughts that the bindings that hold their bond go slack, and the whole of the connection starts to fade, and she reaches out to pull it back in place, but it’s too much. You’re not doing this, the effort would kill you. With a sucking sound, the connection snaps, and Rey is left on her bed, alone.

She takes a moment, still panting from the effort, shaking with frustrated anger. She collapses forward, buries her face in her pillow, and screams.

It’s a few minutes later that she’s regained some sense of control, and the world is no longer unhinged. She feels like a raw nerve, agitated and stinging. She’s annoyed and unnerved, and still aches. She centers herself, and harnesses all that frustration, and pulls the energies around her into a meditative plunge. She can open it again. She just needs to take hold of the thread and—

But it’s not there. There’s nothing but empty gray. And the yawning void beyond.

***

It’s his fault. He knows it is.

He’d known it the moment she’d whispered his words back to him. The connection they’d shared just then had been different because she’d made it happen. That was why he’d felt himself pulled into her, rather than the familiar feeling of barriers falling or barriers lifting. It had been his idiot compulsion to spur her toward the darkness, and the ruthless application of it that he’d so confidently advocated, that had pushed her to try to impose her will not just on him, but on the will of the Cosmic Force. Because, at this point, he knows that cosmic will is the only power remotely capable of facilitating the kind of contact they’ve managed through the Force, just as he knows they may have just broken it for good.

Just after the connection had cut off, and his arms had closed around nothing but the air around him, he had raged. He’d torn swaths around himself with the Force, tossing what few things that weren’t secured to the walls and sending them careening across the floor. There had been something about his demeanor at that point, and in the cold center of his anger, that had allowed him to restrain his instincts. If he hadn’t arrived at the sorrow that clenched deep in his joints and screamed through his bones, he’s sure that he would have drawn his lightsaber, hacked his bed to smoking pieces, blasted every surface with the fire of his saber or the cold indifference of the Force, pushing outward until the transparisteel of the windows gave way and delivered him into the welcoming embrace of the void.

But no such fate had awaited him. Instead, he sits up, legs over the side of his bed, discards his tattered tunic, and tries to focus. He tries to find that center that’s eluded him for so long. To feel the bend and curve of the Living Force, and allow it to carry him, instead of immediately grasping for command of it.

Breathe, he tells himself. Just breathe.

***

It’s her fault. She knows it is.

At first, she’d panicked. The bright thread she’d only first perceived the day before had quickly insinuated itself into her acceptance of reality. It had granted to her a sense of security and control that she’d never quite felt before. But it had also presented a temptation she’d proven unable to resist. And now it was gone.

It’s impossible to know how much time passes as she tries to calm her racing heart, to slow her breathing, to clear her mind and allow herself to find the obscure paths that lead into the fabric of the Living Force once more. And she knows it can’t be helping, but she keeps whispering to the emptiness that surrounds her, over and over, “Come back, come back, please come back.”

She can recognize that if she’d only been honest with herself, she would have been able to admit that what had happened almost immediately after he came into view across from her on the bed was what she’d intended all along. She would have been able to admit that she pulled on the thread that bound them because she was starved for his touch, because she’d been thinking all day about their kiss, and the way it had upended her, and seemed to have bent the course of innumerable destinies in the span of a few minutes.

Instead, she’d succumbed to the notion that she could impose her will and her desire upon something that she’d well known had not only made the bond between her and Ben possible, but had allowed it to blossom and strengthen into something so profound and powerful that it dominated her waking days. And, as she is made constantly aware, strikes her through with a quaking terror. And now that terror is manifest in the absence of it, because not only can she not find the thread, she can’t feel him anymore, and the empty cold that surrounds and seeps into her is the most agonizing sensation she’s ever felt.

She has to find him again. She knows she can. She just needs to be calm. She just needs to breathe.

***

He hasn’t done this in years. Wading his way through the constant turmoil that underpins his whole self. Trying to find his way back to where he once could see beyond this place he’s come to inhabit. Pushing through the mire of his torment, the unbearable sharpness of it, straining to find his calm somewhere in this black ocean, deep and threaded with violent undertow, set to boil.

He can’t sense her light anymore, and he realizes that it’s been a constant lantern by his side ever since he first saw her, months ago in the forest on Takodana. And now, with that lantern having been doused, he’s grasping in the depths of his own blight, searching for the handholds that might guide him out of this perfect hell.

When it arrives, it arrives gradually and all at once: he need not find anything. He stops churning through the limitless morass of his pain and lets time and space flow in and around him. He needs to let go, to accept that he need not command or control, that he is utterly at the mercy of powers beyond what he can comprehend. He felt it before, he realizes now, as he was toiling to break the crystal. Just as the kyber had succumbed to the wound he’d inflicted on it, and the pain it shrieked at him had flung him back, he’d felt something, strong and brief, blast out from him. Light, sure and undiluted, a single burst in a starless sky. Hope, he sees now. Hope born of pain. He has to find that spark, and accept that it came from himself, that the light she sees in him is no illusion, but real and potent, even if it’s only a single glowing ember.

He has to accept.

He has to accept that his father loved him, even as he shoved his lightsaber through his heart. He has to accept that it was not only Snoke’s poisons, or Luke’s failures, but his own choices, that brought him to this low place. He has to accept that his mother still loves him, and wants him to come home, even as he is now. And Rey. He has to accept her, too. Not as he wants to shape or teach her. Not for the power she wields. Not for the warmth of her light or sharp edges of her darkness. But for her.

And he knows now that it’s not a matter of finding his way, but of wanting to be found. So he breathes deeply, letting the currents of the Living Force wash through him like the downhill slope of a river racing to the shore, and finally starts to let go.

***

She sits on the floor facing her bed a long time, finally having tamed the stampede of emotions that threatened to pull her under. Her breathing is smooth, deep, and measured, as she lets herself glide through the color and the shape of things, not searching or reaching, but just feeling.

She’s grown so used to the feeling of him, like a cloud passing over the sun, giving some reprieve from the dust and heat of neverending day, that his absence burns and chills her all at once. She feels a hollow, desperate pit in her chest, and every time she lets her concentration ebb even slightly, she feels long, thin claws of panic sliding up under her skin, and she has to remember her training.

She has to let go her conscious self. She has to surrender her arrogance and her desires to the purpose set before her. But she also now realizes that she need not abandon those things that she wants. She can have them, all of them, but not because she makes them happen by way of force. She needs to understand the limits of what she can impose upon herself, upon others. She needs to recognize that her needs are powerful, and worthy of attention, but must be tempered until they can be addressed without causing greater harm than good.

She needs to understand.

She needs to understand that she doesn’t have to be anything that others want or expect. She needs to understand that she will find the path she seeks only by walking it. And she needs to understand, at last, that the distinction between loving someone for who they can be and loving someone for who they are is no distinction at all. Because implicit in the hope that someone can be something greater, or something worthier, or more of what already makes them exceptional, is the belief that that potential exists already, and the person you love is the person they are, and have always been, and will always be.

And that’s when she sees it. A soft glow building into a shining fire. And more than that. A blinding cord of white blazing sure and strong through the dark. A path. A hope. A thread. And rather than pull on it, expressing her will onto its foundations, she follows it, and lets it guide her to where she wants to be.

***

He opens his eyes and she’s there. But not like ever before. She’s more real, more solid, and the bond is so strong, it seems as though they no longer exist in separate places at all. Her hand goes to her mouth, and tears start down her cheeks as she gets up off the floor and flings her arms around him. He closes his arms around her, and holds her tightly, and knows the tears coming from his own eyes are not from a place of sadness or sorrow or guilt, but of relief.

“You know,” he says, his voice soft and quiet, “I think there might be limits to what we can do with this thing.”

She laughs through the tears and holds to him tighter, and they both sit there in the peaceful half-light, together, embraced.

***

“What happened? Before?”

“I did something.”

“Did. Something.”

“I... hurt something.”

“Oh, Ben, do I want to know?”

“Would it make things better if I said it might make Hux blow himself up?”

“It would.”

***

“I talked to her today.”

“Mother.”

“Yes.”

“What’d she have to say?”

“She said she thinks I’m in love with you.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I didn’t say she was wrong.”

***

“I was so afraid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it was me.”

“It doesn’t matter. Now it’s us.”

Chapter 16: The Huntress

Notes:

Sorry, no Reylo in this chapter. I mean, come on, the kids deserve a little alone time after what just happened. Instead, we get a window into the character I introduced in Chapter 10, the bounty hunter, Vyada Nil. My post-canon worldbuilding is most pronounced where this character is concerned, but I try to stay within the bounds of what I think would be possible or likely given what we know.

As for the droid, some of you may recognize the designation, and I'm definitely calling back to HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic II. Here's a video with his greatest hits, and, while this is NOT the same droid, and Nil has obviously programmed out a lot of the snark, the voice is the one I had in mind while writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg1gTas7OAA

She is called Vyada Nil.

It is the name that was gifted her when she was called to her birthright. It is the name she adopted when that birthright was taken from her. It is a mask and armor. It is all that she is.

Nil checked the coordinates she’d plugged into the hyperdrive one more time, locked-in the auto-pilot, and jumped to light speed. She walked to the back of the cockpit and punched the access code. The door slid aside and revealed the cargo hold, with a large weapons locker and stasis pods modified into charging stations to house rows of battle droids, all slumped in standby mode.

Turning, she opened the weapons locker and examined the contents. The arsenal she’d arranged had been curated for a specific purpose: to hunt, entrap, and kill users of the Force. But now she faced the most challenging targets she’d ever encountered, and each weapon served a unique utility that would surely be employed in the coming days.

Blades. Sith liked those. For show. For the intimacy of a slow kill. To exert the most control over when and how death would come. Their opinions changed when the control they craved was turned against them. Everything bleeds.

Explosives. Useful for strike radius, but easily detectable by Force sensitives. Their utility was in confusion. When the battlefield descended into the chaos of black smoke and charred stone, and the air was choked with embers and ash, even a powerful Force user could become disoriented.

Toxins. Darts and gases. Darts could be employed with relative ease, and, though most Force users would be able to withstand the effects of poisons, the effort required to do so would distract them from the onslaught visited upon them in the kill zone. Gases were less effective. They were more useful for weeding out a Sith’s servants. Or a Jedi’s allies.

Nil had never actually encountered a being calling itself a Jedi that lived up to the billing. They were all of them zealots and pretenders. Users of the Force, but wild and untrained. Easy to confuse. They died like any other target.

Sith were different. They were nimble, adept, and cruel. They had an understanding of their powers and traditions. And they were harder to kill because they were defined by self-interest. But Nil loved nothing more than to watch the disbelieving shock on a Sith’s face as it became inevitable that death had come for them. In the expanse of the Empire, deep in what these people called the Unknown Regions, there was never a lack of warlords or vagabonds, monks or fugitives, who consecrated themselves with the title of Darth and set about earning the right to be feared. It bred a demand for assassins, and marked the grounds upon which these dark pretenders stalked as subject to the hunt.

The Jedi, on the other hand, had been cut off at the root sixty years prior, and the only sprouts that had emerged in their place were pale exercises in mimicry. They gathered in communes and caves, constructed temples from clay and wet timber, and thrilled at making rocks float. None of them were true Jedi, and Nil doubted there would ever be again.

She went to close the locker, and considered the last weapon in her arsenal:

Lightsabers.

They were unwieldy and unnecessarily dangerous weapons. An untrained novice was more likely to hack their own limbs off than strike a blow while using one. For one, they were much heavier than would be imagined, and the insistent thrum of the kyber field could make those not familiar with the flow of the Force nauseous from prolonged exposure.

But they inspired fear and wonder in the enemy. They overpowered any other weapon. They were elegant and efficient. And they killed anything they touched.

The huntress closed the weapons locker, picked up a datapad, and skimmed the information she’d received from the First Order. She knew what the information said. She knew what she needed to do. Her droids, however, were another tale. She had always known how to kill. She had been instructed well in the craft of it. And Nil found it a bitter irony that she now spent much of her time teaching machines to end life as efficiently as she.

She set down the datapad and approached a red droid with armor buffed to a matte finish. It didn’t gleam or shine. Nil preferred stealth over style when it came to her servants. It was time to determine if she could count on them in the battles to come.

“HK-9217, activate.”

The droid’s dim orange eyes blinked to life, and it stood at its stasis station, straightened its back, and looked at the huntress.

“Designation HK-9217, active,” the droid’s voice buzzed and crackled slightly, and sounded like the voice of a man who was profoundly amused to be trapped in a robot body. “Mission commander: Vyada Nil. Query: What is my mission status?”

“Standby,” Nil said, her voice carrying less inflection than the machine that now regarded her. “State mission readiness.”

“Weapons systems: thermal detonators, four active; single-shot missile ordnance, two active, two reserve; flamethrower tanks: left arm: fuel levels, 100 percent; right arm: 87 percent; shock batons: two, sheathed and fully charged. Defensive systems: energy shielding, chest deflector active; rear deflector active; anti-kyber pulse, operational but unloaded; warning: pulse discs are single use, and this unit has no replacement—“

“Disregard. State this unit’s combat readiness.”

“Diagnostic: all joints and hinges at full operational capacity; all servos at full range of movement; thrust capacity: approximately 120 seconds at full discharge.”

“Very good. Has this unit processed the additional intelligence received from the First Order?”

“Affirmative.”

“Report.”

“Target One is a human female, aged 20 standard cycles. Height: five feet, seven inch—“

“Stop. Omit biographical data.”

“Affirmative.”

“Continue with classification.”

“Classification: Target One is a Type IV Force sensitive with limited training.”

“Training summary.”

“Target One has been trained in some techniques used by the Jedi Order of the Galactic Republic. Observation: Many of these skills appear to be intrinsic, rather than taught.”

It was an extraordinary circumstance, Nil thought. This girl, wherever she’d come from, had a massive amount of potential, and her power in the Force was only growing. No wonder Snoke had sought her out. He always did have a knack for spotting his next student. And his next victim.

“Weaponry.”

“Target One has possession of a Corellian Model-YT freighter with customized weapons systems. She utilizes a number of melee weapons in combat, including a durasteel quarterstaff, monomolecular blades and axes, and, it is reported, a lightsaber.”

“Tell me about the saber.”

“Reports describe a late-era Republic style lightsaber with a blue kyber crystal, Type I-B attunement. Origin of attunement: Skywalker, Anakin; Jedi Knight. Deceased, 4 A.B.Y.”

Enough about the girl. Nil wanted to hear about him.

“Next Target.”

“Classification: Target Two is a Type IV Force sensitive with extensive training.”

“Training summary.”

“First Order, approximately seven years. Instructor: Supreme Leader Snoke. Deceased 34 A.B.Y. Target Two has been trained in the use of the Force in the fashion of ancient Sith traditions.” The droid paused, as if to add dramatic effect. “Addendum: Target Two was also trained by an unknown Jedi. Deduction: It is highly likely that prior to instruction under Supreme Leader Snoke, Target Two was a student of Skywalker, Luke; Jedi Master. Deceased 34 A.B.Y.”

“Expound.”

“Analysis: Target Two was enlisted into the ranks of the First Order at the age of 23 standard cycles. Records indicate he was already proficient in many Force related skills and abilities associated with the Jedi Order of the Galactic Republic. The refinement of these skills suggest extended formal training. At the time of Target Two’s recruitment, the only living Jedi Master was Luke Skywalker. Conclusion: Target Two was likely trained by Skywalker in the Jedi arts.”

Nil was impressed. The droid had deduced Ren’s hybrid training history through implication. She was interested to see how much more the droids might be able to imply.

“Does this unit have any conjecture to report as to the previous subject?”

“Affirmative. Requesting permission to speculate.”

“Granted.”

“Speculation: It is possible Target One also received some limited instruction from Skywalker.”

“Expound.”

“Analysis: Target One, while untrained in a formal sense, exhibits signs of advanced training in observed use of Force abilities. As she displays many techniques of Jedi origin, the deduction reached in regard to Target Two also applies here. Observation: Target One is reported to possess the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker. Further speculation: Target One May have received the weapon from Luke Skywalker or another family member.”

“List known Skywalkers.”

“Skywalker, Anakin; known alias: Darth Vader. Skywalker, Luke. Organa, Leia. Solo, Ben.”

“Whereabouts.”

“Skywalker, Anakin: Deceased, 4 A.B.Y.; Skywalker, Luke: Deceased, 34 A.B.Y.; Organa, Leia: whereabouts unknown, likely with the organization referred to as the Resistance; Solo, Ben: whereabouts unknown. Permission to speculate.”

“Go ahead.”

“Analysis: Ben Solo was known to be Force sensitive. He was trained by his uncle, Luke Skywalker, at a training temple that was destroyed circa 27 A.B.Y. He was assumed missing afterward. At the time of the attack on the temple, Solo was aged 23 standard cycles. Speculation: considering the naming convention associated with his title, it may be likely that Target Two is Ben Solo.”

“Confidence?”

“Request for clarification: shall this unit assume the First Order’s records concerning the Knights of Ren to be accurate?”

“Yes.”

“Further request for clarification: shall this unit assume Target Two was trained by Luke Skywalker?”

“Yes. Continue.”

“If such records are accurate, Target Two arrived at the behest of Supreme Leader Snoke in 27 A.B.Y. along with six others. Target Two was the only amongst them aged 23. The rest were younger. Conclusion: there is a 59 percent likelihood that these seven individuals were survivors of the temple attack; assuming that to be correct, confidence that Target Two is Ben Solo is 100 percent.”

The huntress considered this a moment. She had made the deduction herself within hours of receiving the preliminary intelligence. This droid had deduced it in an even shorter amount of time. It made her wonder why it wasn’t more widely known. It also made her wonder if the droid could fall prey to over-reliance on speculation.

“Target One. Could she be a Skywalker?”

“This unit requests permission to utilize sarcasm.”

“Denied.”

She almost thought she heard the droid breathe an exhausted sigh.

“Analysis: Target One was first observed by the First Order at a salvage settlement on Jakku, a planet best known for being the site of the wreckage of the remainder of the fleet of the Galactic Empire. Intelligence indicates she was a scavenger and had been known to the locals as an orphan once owned by a parts dealer named Unkar Plutt. Further intelligence indicates she had been scavenging there since she was a child.”

“Continue.”

“Historical observation: Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were highly visible individuals within the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic. Birth records do not indicate Organa had any other offspring. And, considering the Jedi inclination toward celibacy, it seems unlikely Skywalker produced any of his own.”

“Permission to assume Skywalker was not celibate.”

“Analysis: Skywalker’s whereabouts and movements during the time period surrounding the assumed birth year of Target One were well documented. Chances he could have produced offspring without anyone learning of it are less than 15 percent. Addendum: it is also unlikely that any custodian of an offspring of Skywalker’s would elect to abandon that offspring, particularly to the kind of existence common to scavengers, and at such a young age.”

“Conclude.”

“Conclusion: likelihood of consanguinity is less than one percent.”

Nil was satisfied. The droids were no fools.

“Return to Target Two. Weaponry.”

“Target Two uses a highly modified lightsaber. Kyber crystal of unknown original color. Type V attunement. Origin of attunement: Unknown. Origin of crystal bleeding: Target Two.”

“Describe the saber modifications.”

“Diagnostic: Target Two’s lightsaber utilizes a Malachorian design to accommodate the unstable kyber field generated by the damaged crystal. The focusing chamber is braced by quillion emitters that vent excess energy into a cross guard.”

“Is the crystal’s field being manipulated?”

“Unknown. Speculation: Target Two may have manipulated the kyber field to render it as stable as could be maintained while still using a portable housing.”

Good. The droid had a grasp of who they were dealing with. Now to see if she’d managed to teach them anything.

“Analyze targets for engagement and elimination.”

“Target One, whereabouts unknown. Observation: Hunter Nil could utilize a strategy of attacking the innocent. Jedi are known to be drawn out of hiding, and even be deceived into sacrificing themselves, for the good of others.”

“Noted. Combat prediction.”

“Prediction: Target One, if engaged, will likely be dangerous due to her status as a Type IV Force sensitive, and her unpredictability as a result of lacking extended formal training. Suggestion: Hunter Nil should utilize a strategic ambush to catch her off guard. Chance of success: 83 percent.”

Nil considered a moment, and nodded. An ambush was the best option. And springing the trap could be accomplished through use of the right bait, as the droid had suggested.

“Next target.”

“Target Two, location: the Finalizer, acting flagship of the First Order flotilla. Observation: This target will be highly difficult to engage without an organized insurrection or targeted betrayal.”

“Understood. Combat prediction.”

“Prediction: Target Two, if engaged, will be a highly dangerous opponent. Suggestion: Hunter Nil should attempt ranged or remote assassination. Chance of success: 62 percent.”

No. Kylo Ren would not die in his bed or at his dining table. He would not be picked off at range by a dart or a lucky blaster bolt. It was his destiny to die standing, and in full knowledge of the burden and crimes of his legacy.

“Rejected. Next suggestion.”

“Alternative suggestion: Hunter Nil should utilize a systematic assault with battle droids, and engage Target Two in direct combat. Chance of success: 51 percent.”

The odds mattered less to her than the principle. She was hired to kill the Jedi girl. And she would die. That was the contract. Ren was part of her payment. And he would die. That was the promise.

“Does this unit have any queries?”

“Affirmative. Query: This vessel appears to be approximately 62,000 light years from Imperial space. Is Hunter Nil planning on returning to the Empire?”

“No.”

“Additional query: have additional bounties been contracted?”

“No.”

“Observation: Hunter Nil is not planning on continuing to hunt following the current bounty.”

Nil’s eyes narrowed until they were black slits.

“This unit will deactivate.”

“Affirmative,” the droid buzzed, took two steps back into the stasis station, and slumped back into position.

Nil walked to the viewport at the back of her vessel, and stared out into the streaming pulse of blue and white that made up the distances between the stars. She knew what she had come here to do, and that purpose had been stolen from her. So, now, the thieves would be dealt with as all thieves must be: with the chain and the sword.

She raised her hand to the glass and touched it lightly. The flickering glow of hyperspace outlined her fingers as though a clutch of energies had collected around them. As though she could reach out and harness them and bend them to her control. She stared at the illusion of it, knowing it to be a trick of the light, and closed her fist, one finger at a time, around nothing.

Chapter 17: Requiem, Unison

“Ben, say something.”

He wants to. Words won’t come. It’s not like he should be surprised. But the settling of the idea in his mind feels like a sudden blow, the prickle of blood pincushioning outward from the point of impact. The stagger. The recoil. And the airlessness that follows.

“I don’t know if it makes any difference, but she didn’t even tell me. I had to find out from Poe.”

Dameron. The son she’d deserved. Brash and cocky and volatile in all the ways that are dismissed and accepted as boyish enthusiasm. They’d never actually met until he’d taken the man prisoner on Jakku. He’d taken no small satisfaction in breaking him, peeling away the defenses of his mind, reaching in and tearing away what he’d wanted. The memory of it summons a watery chill into the bond, and she responds to it as though she could anticipate exactly what was coming, placing her hand on his cheek, warming what had gone numb with cold.

“Don’t. It doesn’t help, and you know it. You don’t have to forget these things. You don’t even have to be sorry for them. But don’t revel in them.”

He wants to ask her if she could see his thoughts. But he doesn’t. He lets it go. He decides it doesn’t matter, because whether she could see into the shape and form of his thoughts, it’s certain she knew where his mind had gone. And, also, she’s right.

“And anyway, it’s not like she doesn’t think of you. She’s certainly not thinking of Poe. After— well, I avoided her for a long time. She was always thinking about you, and I— it didn’t exactly make things easier.”

He doesn’t react, but looks into her eyes, and, like so many times before, wants to drown in them. And, now, lying on his bed— or hers, or theirs— he feels like he’s come untethered from whatever gravity has held him in place. His mother was going to die. It was an eventuality he’d been aware of, and even ready for, for years. But now that it’s here, only weeks or days away, the immediacy and permanence of it is arresting.

“Talk to me,” she says, leaning closer.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses, and adds, softer now, “Not long.”

“I thought I lost her once,” he says, looking down. “I can do it again.”

“When was that?”

“I almost fired,” he mutters, remembering swinging his TIE silencer around the hull of the Resistance cruiser, banking to firing position, and being unable to launch. “I— I couldn’t. I could feel she wasn’t angry. I wanted her to be. I wanted her to hate me. She should hate me.”

“Ben—“

“No,” he says, his eyes darting back to meet hers, “she should. I know she doesn’t. And I couldn’t fire on the bridge. But my wingman could. And I wasn’t fast enough to stop it.”

“What did you try to stop?”

“The missiles. I wasn’t fast enough. And I couldn’t sense her anymore. I still can’t.”

“Like Luke,” she whispers.

“What?”

She knits her brow and shoots him a frustrated look.

“You know there are going to be times I talk about your family. That includes your uncle.”

He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath through his nose. When he opens them again, she’s not as frustrated as at first, but she’s still not pleased.

“What about Luke?” he asks, trying his best to strike a conciliatory tone.

She cocks an eyebrow, pauses for a moment, but continues.

“When I first arrived on Ahch-To, he taught me how to meditate, and I could sense everything on the island, but not him. He was... blank. It was like he didn’t exist at all. He’d cut himself off from the Force.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Well, he’d done it. It was kind of amazing, really. He was living like some kind of mad hermit. He spent all day hiking about the island, and he was using this ridiculously long spear to fish with, and— are you laughing?”

He’s trying not to. But the image is so absurd that he’s finding it hard to keep the corners of his mouth from curling upward, and he’s becoming acutely aware that he’s swallowing very hard to keep his composure.

“He was fishing,” he says, with a slight tremor. “With a spear.”

“I’m serious. It was maybe eighty feet long.”

“How was he—“

“Like this,” she says, sitting up and mimicking the motion. “From a ledge I wouldn’t even climb on.”

“And you’re sure he wasn’t using the Force.”

“I’m certain. He wasn’t using it. Not even a little.”

“Tell me something else.”

“About Luke? On the island.”

“Oh, please do.”

“He was getting milk from some kind of enormous sea creature. Right on the beach.”

He closes his mouth hard, but he practically snorts. He can tell she’s both rising to the challenge of making him laugh, and also recognizing how amusing the story is herself.

“I’m not joking! He just walked right up to it, pushed, and, out came the milk.”

And that’s it. He lets out a peal of laughter, his chest heaving, and she starts to laugh, too.

“It was green,” she says, barely able to speak.

And now he can’t breathe, and there’s a pain in his side, and the muscles of his diaphragm are sore from convulsing. Every time he thinks he’s done, the picture of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, milking some kind of sea cow, is too much, and the laughter comes again.

“Tell me something else,” he says between gasping breaths, finally able to surface.

She wipes the corners of her eyes and slows her breathing. He can feel her centering herself through the bond, redirecting a flow of calming thoughts and feelings through the Force into them both. It’s an odd, but pleasing sensation, and soon they’re both breathing evenly again, eyes locked, lying next to each other, like it’s the only thing in the world that actually makes sense.

“He was sorry,” she says, and she says it with a gentle sincerity he knows he’ll never be able to resent. “And he knew he could never take it back.”

There was a time, even just days before, when any version of that sentiment would have sent him sprawling into a nihilistic death-drive. But now, here, with her, it doesn’t seem like something that ought to matter much at all. And, so, when he responds, it’s calmly, and to the point.

“He told me. The ‘sorry’ part. On Crait. Before I realized he wasn’t even there.”

“You have to admit. It was pretty impressive.”

“It was clever.”

“You’re just upset because you couldn’t do it.”

“You do remember he died doing that.”

“Yes,” she says, her fingers trailing up over his arm, “but he wanted to do it. And he knew he needed to. I think it was his way of making up for,” she pauses, before quietly saying, “everything.”

“I swore to him I’d destroy you,” he says, almost in a whisper, and smiles softly, bringing his hand to her cheek.

“Psh,” she scoffs, leaning into him, “I’ve tried to kill you loads of times.”

The kiss is slow, yielding, and he wonders what it was he’d ever done to deserve this, to have this gift from the Force, something so simple and right. It makes him forget power. It makes him forget pain. And, most of all, it makes him forget the cold chambers that have hidden in his heart, those empty spaces heavy with the ghosts of regret. He knows that he has found his peace, and there’s nothing he can imagine that would ever cause him to forsake it. He wants to sink into her, to just be, and to never leave this place.

They lie together, not saying anything, just touching, just appreciating what they both feared they’d lost forever just hours before. After some time passes, a look crosses her face. He knows that look. It’s the look she gets when she’s just figured out the answer to a problem.

“Ben,” she says, her eyes wide with excitement, “I want you to help me with something.”

***

He holds the pale blue crystal half between his fingers and turns it, watching its subtle glow shift with the light. Here, in the copse of their bond, he can feel the Force bending around and flowing through it, and can almost hear the resonance of the crystal, a half measure trying desperately to complete.

“Tell me again why you think this will work,” he says, looking up from the crystal. She’s sitting across from him on the bed, holding the other half.

“I don’t think it’ll work. I know it will.”

“Famous last words.”

“Oh, shut up. I’ve been meditating with the halves, and it’s been trying to tell me how I can mend it. And that’s just the thing: I can’t do it. But we can.”

“I don’t exactly have a good track record with fixing things.”

“Lucky thing I do.” She reaches across, taking his hand. “Can’t you sense it? It’s why the crystal broke in half. It wouldn’t choose between us. It wanted balance, and all we gave it was— the point is, we can do it now, make things right.”

“What is balance? Luke said the Force was in balance before I was born. And then it wasn’t.”

“Maybe it wasn’t balance at all. Maybe it was just,” she stops, searching for the right word, and says, “quiet.”

“Or asleep,” he says, not knowing exactly why. But it feels right, and she nods.

“And now it’s awake,” she says insistently. She leans closer to him, holding her half of the crystal between them. “It’s just us, Ben. You and me. And we don’t have to be anything but that.”

“All right,” he says, swallowing. “I’ll try.”

“No. We. And we’re not going to try. We’re going to do it.”

He brings his half of the crystal up to meet hers. He looks her in the eyes as they press the broken halves together, and the twin resonances expand outward from the crystal, blending toward harmony, energies careening through them both as the visions take hold.

***

He is learning that visions don’t follow any set rules. They invade and beckon, entice and repulse, soothe and disrupt. But there is one constant, it seems: you cannot look away. And you never forget.

The strange, yet familiar, sensation of fitting in a new skin. Moving without volition. Speaking with a different voice. Shadows and space. A bank of windows, a fierce battle being waged above the broad curvature of a twinkling planetscape. The clash of lightsabers, red on blue.

“I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don’t use them.”

Remember your forms. Patience. Keep patience. Be mindful. Parry. Dodge. Riposte. Calm. Must be calm.

The old man can’t keep up. Strong. Flowing through the movements. Bending the Force. Muscle memory and timing. The smooth slice as plasma severs flesh and the blades, red on blue, now lay crossed on either side of the kneeling man’s head.

“Good, Anakin, good,” the voice from the throne notes its praise. Snoke. He feels like Snoke. “Kill him. Kill him now.”

Kill him. No, it’s not the way. Dangerous. The war will end. Remember the Code. Padmé. Home with Padmé. Kill him. Dangerous. Kill. So easy. Kill.

“I shouldn’t,” he hears the voice come from his borrowed mouth.

“Do it.”

The old man’s pleading eyes. Looking up, like Rey in Snoke’s throne room. The sickening whine as the blades slide against each other. The hollow thud as the old man’s head comes free from his shoulders and smacks on the ground.

Smoke and distance as the world slides away. The dimness of a meditation chamber.  Light falling in slats across the floor.

“Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.”

“I won’t let these visions come true, Master Yoda.”

Pain. Screaming. She calls my name. I’m powerless. Like with my mother. Padmé. Not this time.

“Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who become one with the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.”

No. Never. I will not let these things come to pass. I will not mourn her. I will not miss her. Because she won’t die. I won’t allow it.

“Ironic. He could save others from death. But not himself.”

This man. This wound in the Force. Why can’t Anakin sense it? Poison upon poison. Lies. Always lies from these tyrants.

“Is there a way to learn this power?”

“Not from a Jedi.”

Peeling away the outer layers. Opening the blast furnace. There is no surface, only the fall.

“I feel lost,” he hears the voice that is not his say.

“Lost?” She is cast in a bloom of mid afternoon light. Padmé. Grandmother. She looks so much like Rey.

“I’m not the Jedi I should be. I want more. And I know I shouldn’t.”

Her belly big with child. Luke. Leia. Mother. He wants to sense his mother. But he can’t. Because Anakin can’t. Or won’t. Anakin doesn’t even know Padmé’s carrying twins. Because Anakin Skywalker can’t think of anything beyond his nightmares.

Mine. She’s mine. Death can’t have her. Nothing else will have her. She’s MINE.

“I’m not going to die in childbirth. I promise you.”

“No, I promise you.”

The slow cloud of memory, the haze of the now. The voice of seduction, housed in the form of a father.

“Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the power of the Dark Side. Power to save your wife from certain death.”

The slide of color. Night falling and a spray of shattered glass. Violet and red and blue-white.

I won’t let it happen. If the darkness will save her, so be it. I will find the way, and THEY won’t stop me. They CAN’T stop me. I NEED HIM.

“POWER! Unlimited POWER!”

The stench of electric smoke and fresh burns. Screams. Pain. And the fall.

“What have I done?” The voice is scratched raw with disbelief, horror. But the mind is less tortured. It is accepting the cold dark and the fire ringed around it.

“You’re fulfilling your destiny.”

Yellow eyes and corpse flesh. Decay and venom and the promise to power.

They betrayed me. They never listened. I will take this power. It’s my destiny. It’s my birthright. I am the Chosen One. I will show them what I was chosen to do. And they will know the terror that has stalked me since I was a child.

“Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth Vader. Rise.”

Anakin Skywalker was weak, conflicted. He could not save his mother. He would have watched Padmé die. Darth Vader has no limits. He knows no destiny but the one he ordains.

Midnight bells and the horns of war. The clack of soldiers’ boots on polished marble. Screams. The visitation of death, blue and welcoming. The children look to him for help. They run. But not far.

Fear. They are right to fear. Better death than the life they are destined for. One swift cut each. Shh. It will be over soon.

Fire and ash. Blast doors sliding shut. Fear. The air is thick with it. And soon with wails and pleading. And silence.

Kill. Cut through them like paper. I’m free. That’s right. Beg. Witness my mercy.

She is delicate and sad in a shower of ash. She is pleading, too. And the hope in her eyes has bled white as she sees what the man she loves has become.

This power I have claimed for HER. And she will be protected. Even from her own folly. I will not allow harm to come to what is mine.

“The Jedi turned against me. Don’t you turn against me.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Anakin, you’re breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can’t follow.”

The drop of the gauntlet. A spike of panic. A last entreaty. And the man standing at the top of the boarding ramp. A father who would not be a father. A knight come to visit a reckoning upon his fallen brother.

Obi-Wan. Always Obi-Wan. And here he is. She brought him here to kill me. LIAR. TRAITOR. WHORE. I was a fool. I loved her too much. And now she will fear me. Now she will know the wages of her crime. Submit. Suffer. CHOKE.

He watches from within as Padmé’s hands go to her throat. He watches and does nothing as she mouths a soundless plea. He watches because all he can do is watch. Because he is not Kylo Ren. And he is not Ben Solo. And he is not Anakin Skywalker. He is Darth Vader. And there is no mercy but the iron grip of death.

As Padmé’s world is washing red to black, the swirl of ash drifts over him. And the wind that comes hot and ceaseless from the magma pits sweeps him and the memories that are now forever his beyond the waiting veil.

***

Rey is still looking him in the eyes as the vision releases him. His mind is still scrambling to find purchase in the here and now, to secure a foothold somewhere outside the hell he just escaped. He anchors himself in her gaze, and he can see her eyes are wide and filled with joy. Whatever the Force showed her, it was something far different than what was shown him. But he soon forgets the blight and the hopelessness of the place he just was as she pulls him to her. And he feels a change pass over him. And the world makes sense. And the life he lived before seems small and unworthy as his name is on her breath, and she kisses him again and again.

A long time passes before either of them notice the soft glow of the crystal on the floor next to the bed. Its song bleeds into the current of the Force as it blends into balance around them, two halves joined, whole.

Chapter 18: The Engineer

The sun had come up, and that meant that the wire casings were melting again. Rose had been sure the coolant foam would do the trick, but apparently these model transports had been designed to specifically intensify heat inside the hull. It wasn’t as if these things needed to be operational any time soon, but Rose had caught up on the rest of her work, and she had a score to settle.

She reached into her toolkit and produced a suction tool. She maneuvered the nozzle into the tangle of wires, and began vacuuming up the excess thermoplastic before it had a chance to fuse with adjacent casings. She wanted to just rip out the whole electrical system and rewire with thermoset and polyethylene, but the Resistance didn’t have spare parts in sufficient enough supply to justify it. And Poe had already classified this particular transport as scrap anyway. There was really no reason Rose should have been toiling in the heat on this junkpile, but she felt restless, and it rankled her to see an unfinished project sitting on the tarmac.

Rose slid out from under the maintenance panel, sat up, and took a swig of water from her canteen. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she looked over at the Falcon. The boarding ramp was down, and it hadn’t been just minutes before. She started scanning the flight deck, thinking she might catch a glimpse of Rey. Maybe that’s why it startled her so badly when she looked to her right to see Rey standing over her, and she jumped, smacking her head on the hull of the transport.

“Oh, Rose! Sorry, sorry. Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Rose said, bringing her hand up to where she’d hit. “Don’t worry. It’s just my head.”

Rose peered up at her, letting her eyes adjust to the bright sunshine. Rey had her hair pulled back, like usual, and the bruise on her temple was almost gone. There was something about her demeanor that seemed different, but Rose couldn’t quite place it.

“Any luck with this thing?”

Rose glanced over her shoulder at the exposed maintenance panel.

“It would probably help if it hadn’t been designed for use in sub-freezing temperatures.”

“Are the wire casings melting?”

“Yeah, and I’m just about to scrap the whole thing myself.”

“Back on Jakku, Plutt used to do this on purpose. Rip out the paneling and replace the wiring with thermoplastic before the buyer knew any better. Then, when the wires melted, he’d offer to fix it. For a price.”

“Charming,” Rose said, taking another drink from her canteen.

“He certainly had a way,” Rey said, and Rose could detect an air of bitterness, but only a fleeting one. Rey went down to one knee, craning around to see the inside of the panel. After a few seconds, she turned and looked at Rose. There was a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“Oh, I know that look,” Rose said. “What have you got for me?”

***

Rose turned the bottom half of the broken lightsaber over in her hand, taking a closer look at it for the first time. It was heavier than she would have thought, and, looking down the barrel of the housing, she could see why. There was no unused space inside, and the components looked very high quality. Rose was sure there was no way they’d ever be able to find a power cell like this one anywhere else. And that was to say nothing of the other parts.

Here, inside Rey’s makeshift workshop on the Falcon, Rose could see Rey had been puzzling over and working on the saber for weeks. There were tools scattered on the workbench that looked like they’d been specially modified to remove and reinsert the components within the housing with a minimum of hassle.

“So, do you want to machine a new housing or weld the old one?”

“I don’t know. I suppose we could just weld this one. The break isn’t all that jagged.”

“Yeah,” Rose said, setting down one half and picking up the other. “It’s not like we have all that much refined durasteel sitting around. Certainly not to this quality. But, I’m sure we have enough for a weld. And if we don’t, once Poe finds out you’re fixing the lightsaber, he’ll have a scout team out finding you parts within the hour.”

“I’d prefer we just do this ourselves,” Rey said, holding the kyber crystal between her fingers.

“Okay. I just want you to know that once we're inside there, it’s all you. Because I don’t know the first thing about lightsabers.”

“I’m not that much farther along than you.” Rey put down the crystal on the workbench. “Honestly. I know just enough not to blow myself up. I think.”

Rose crinkled her nose, and turned her attention to Rey.

“Is there a good chance of that?”

“It shouldn’t be as bad now that the crystal’s mended.”

“Do you mind?” Rose asked, motioning to the crystal.

“Oh, no. Be my guest.”

Rose held the crystal up to the light and turned it, watching the milky blue coloring shift between refraction of the light behind it, and its own subtle glow. It was a mesmerizing effect, and Rose found it difficult to look away. She’d seen the crystal once before, when Rey had the saber parts out. It had been split in a smooth line right down the middle. Now, there wasn’t the slightest suggestion that it had ever been damaged at all.

“How did you repair this, anyway?”

“Would you believe it if I told you I put the pieces under my pillow and dreamed about fixing it, then woke up and it was fixed?”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“Good. Because that was maybe the worst rubbish I’ve ever come up with.”

“Well, whatever you did, you’d never know it was split.”

Rose handed the crystal back, and she saw a soft smile on Rey’s face as she did.

“I promise one day I’ll tell you,” Rey said. There was a distant, dreamlike tone in her voice, and she stared into the crystal like she was trying to divine some unknowable mystery. “But, for now, I really can’t.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

“Deal,” she said, setting the crystal down.

“All right,” Rose said, putting her hands on her hips. “All the wiring is cut, so we’re going to have to rebuild almost from scratch.”

“Maybe not. I think we could probably repair the wires.”

“That seems... dangerously unsafe.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. You should see Be—“ Rey stopped mid-word, cleared her throat, and started again. “I mean, I’ve seen a lightsaber with some pretty unusual modifications.”

Rose knew what lightsaber she was talking about. The black hilt. The red, crackling blade. The cross guard, making the weapon look like an otherworldly knight’s sword from ancient tales. She’d never actually seen it in person. But it was practically legend.

“You mean Kylo Ren’s.”

“Yes. That one.”

Whatever easiness and dreamlike calm Rey had exuded just moments ago was gone, replaced by the same nervous hesitation that she always fell into when someone mentioned Ren. But there was something more immediate about it this time. And the way she stopped short, like she was about to say another name. Something was off, and Rose was about to ask her about it, but Rey was gesturing back toward the severed housing.

“Maybe we should just use new wiring.”

“I think that’s probably best,” Rose said, returning her attention to the matter at hand.

“I’m just always looking for ways to salvage things. Scavenger.”

“And I’m always trying to make them do more with less. Engineer.”

“See, and that’s not really an issue here,” Rey said excitedly, picking up the bottom half of the saber. “The energy cell in the pommel is more like an ignition starter. It’s the crystal that generates and maintains the beam.”

“I’ve always wondered how these things don’t run out of juice like, immediately.”

“Oh, it’s fascinating,” Rey continued, picking up the other half now, pointing to the different components as she talked. “So, here’s where the crystal sits, and right above it is an energy lens. The focusing array channels the power from the crystal through the lens, and the beam leaves through the emitter here. And it would just keep going—“

“A liminal stream.”

“Yes. Exactly. But that’s where it gets really interesting. The lens is positively charged, but here, in the emitter—“

“There’s a negatively charged flux aperture,” Rose added, sharing Rey’s excitement. The interplay of the saber’s components were suddenly coming into focus in her mind. “And it pulls the beam back.”

“Yes!” Rey smiled widely. “You’re really good at this.”

“But how— how does it not just blast all over the place? This kind of energy in a plasma beam should burst out in all directions if it’s being bent back at such a sharp angle.”

“That’s where the technical aspects get tricky. The crystal generates a field that traps the beam. Think of it like a one-way deflector shield.”

“So matter can pass through, but because the beam is generated already inside the field, it’s trapped in there for good.”

“That’s the best I can figure it.”

“Is it some kind of resonance frequency?”

“Oh, there’s a resonance. I can feel it whenever I’m near the crystal. It’s really strong when the blade is active.”

“If that’s the case,” Rose said, puzzling through the confusing dynamics at play, “couldn’t a counter-frequency disrupt the field and cause the blade to deactivate?”

“I suppose so, but it’d have to vibrate in a pretty powerful burst to disrupt the field.”

“And there are, what, superconductors up here,” Rose said, pointing to the top half of the housing, “that channel energy back into the power cell?”

“Got it.”

“Wow. These things really are case studies in power conservation." She crossed her arms and looked down at the bench. "So, the crystal. Do we need to set up an interferometer to align it in the focusing array?”

“No. I have to feel my way through that.”

“Say again?”

“I have to use the Force to align the crystal. It can’t be aligned by machine.”

Rose balked at the idea of aligning plasma optics by feel. It seemed like a recipe for deep tissue burns and property damage. But, she reasoned, the Jedi had been doing this for thousands upon thousands of years, and she had to defer to Rey’s judgment.

“I’m not questioning,” Rose said, more to herself than to Rey. “I’m not. I’m not going to question.”

“Well,” Rey said, her excitement undiminished, “should we get started?”

***

They’d been at it for hours, but, finally, the housing was welded, and the circuits and wiring were replaced and reconnected. They’d spent a good long while trying to make absolutely sure they hadn’t reversed the polarity of the energy lens. They’d been so concerned about it that, before running a test charge through the lens, they’d wheeled in a blast shield and secured it to the compartment paneling in the floor. The charge had gone through without a hitch, but the power level was only a minor fraction of what would be channeled through the components once the crystal was installed, and Rose was still apprehensive about it. After the test, Rey had set the crystal in the focusing array, they’d closed up the housing, and secured the fastenings.

Rose had then marveled as Rey sat at the bench, eyes closed, her hand perched over the saber. Her fingers moved very slightly, as though she was playing some kind of delicate instrument, and Rose felt like she was witness to an event of cosmic significance, something akin to a religious rite. She supposed that’s what it was. And even though Rose couldn’t sense whatever it was Rey could, there was a faint feeling that stirred in her chest. Something warm and welcoming. It was around the moment she was most aware of that feeling that Rey’s eyes opened slowly, and, with a smile, she’d nodded, and stood up.

“How confident are you this won’t blow up?”

Rey let out a contented sigh.

“Fairly?”

“We could stand behind the blast shield and remotely ignite.”

“You can,” Rey said calmly, still looking at the saber. “I think I have to just pick it up.”

“Why?”

“I— oh this is going to sound insane— it feels insulting. Like I’d be saying to the crystal that I don’t trust it.”

“Yep,” Rose looked at her, nodding. “That sounds insane.”

Rey picked up the weapon and steadied herself.

“Well, here goes.”

“I’ll be over here,” Rose said, moving behind the blast shield. “No offense. Either of you.”

Rey let out a long breath, closed her eyes, and pressed the ignition switch. With a smooth hum, the blade leapt to life, an incandescent spike of pure white tinged blue. She opened her eyes and twirled the hilt, the blade emitting its distinct electrical drone as it cut elegant strokes through the air. Satisfied, Rey flipped the switch again, and the blade disappeared with a sharp hishing sound.

“So,” Rose said, stepping out from behind the shield, “I guess that’s good?”

“Yes, it’s... right.”

“Was it not before?”

Rey balanced the hilt in her hand for a moment, then secured it to the clip on her belt that had been empty for months.

“It was different. It feels like it’s finally mine.”

“It used to belong to Luke, right?”

“Yes, and his father, Anakin.”

“Wait. This thing belonged to Darth Vader?”

“He built it, actually. Before he was Vader.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“I wasn’t, either,” Rey said, her warm smile returning. She was serene, and, Rose thought, happy. “Now— well, no one’s born a monster. Some choose it. For others... it’s not that simple.”

Rose watched her for a moment, not really knowing how to respond.

“Sorry,” Rey said, shaking her head, “It’s something I’ve thought about a lot.”

“No, it’s— it’s understandable. Life’s hard enough without having to worry about, you know, falling to the Dark Side.”

“Yes,” Rey said, laughing slightly. “That it is. Thank you, Rose. I couldn’t have done this without your help.”

“No problem. I’ve always wanted to build a laser sword,” Rose said, smiling. “I’m heading out. You want to come with? Grab a bite from the mess?”

“No, you go ahead. I’m going to clean up around here.”

Rose gave Rey a smile, turned down the corridor, and walked down the boarding ramp and off the Falcon.

***

She found Finn in their room, a blaster rifle half disassembled. He was cleaning and oiling the parts. It was something she knew he did when he wanted to relax. It was familiar, and comfort comes easiest from the familiar. He didn’t look up when she came in, but she knew he’d noticed. She sat down on the edge of the bed and stared ahead.

“Finn?”

“Hm?”

“Last night. When you were talking about Kylo Ren.”

“Yeah?”

“Is that his real name?”

Finn stopped what he was doing and turned to face her.

“That’s,” he started, his brow knit and his face serious, “not something I’m really supposed to talk about.”

“What does that mean?”

“I— I promised.”

“Promised who?”

“Rose, it’s— why are you asking me about this?”

She looked down at her hands. She knew why she was asking. But she didn’t really want to admit to her own thoughts.

“It’s probably nothing. I just had a weird feeling.”

“Look,” Finn said, crossing over to her from the desk and lowering his voice, “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

Rose felt a strange chill creep up her back. She felt like things were about to change forever.

“Is this a promise I’ll be able to keep?”

“Well,” he said, smiling that quirky, honest smile of his, “there’s no way I’m not telling you, now, so I guess that’s up to you.”

“All right,” she said after a few seconds, her voice much softer and more hesitant than she’d meant it to be. “I promise.”

Finn pressed his lips into a tight line, let out a hard breath, and said it.

“Kylo Ren is Ben Solo. He’s Leia’s son.”

“What?”

“I never knew when I was with the First Order. I only found out on Starkiller Base, when—“

“When he killed Han.”

“Yeah, when he— when he killed his father.”

“Does anyone else know? Other than Leia?”

“Chewie. Rey. And now you.”

Rose’s head was spinning. She didn’t have a clue what her face must look like, but judging from his reaction to it, she must have been doing a terrible job of hiding how poorly she was taking the news.

“Are you okay?” Finn asked, putting his arm around her.

“Yeah,” she lied, “I just— I wasn’t expecting that.”

“No kidding. Why did you ask that?”

Rose sniffed. She hadn’t realized she’d started to cry.

“I was helping Rey fix her lightsaber and—“ She stopped a moment to wipe her eyes. “We talked about Darth Vader.  And I realized Kylo Ren might not have been his real name. I was just curious.”

“But you said you had a weird feeling.”

“Nowhere near as weird as it feels now.”

Rose felt like she’d been hit with a stun bolt. The look Finn was giving her was so worried and unsure that she forced herself to smile, and she drew him into a full hug.

“I’ll be fine,” she said into his shoulder. “It was just a shock. I’ll— I’ll be fine.”

But she knew it was a lie. And the feeling that twisted in her gut didn’t subside.

Chapter 19: The Rebel

The man who had, in a different life, been known as designation FN-2187 walked briskly down a corridor inside the Vedic III Resistance base with a newly reassembled and optimized blaster rifle slung over his shoulder. He walked with a feeling of direction and purpose, two things he had never had in his life beforehand. The Resistance against the First Order had offered him a vehicle for purpose and a promise of direction, and, though initially slow to accept the call, Finn had thrown himself heart and soul into the cause.

But right now the conversation he’d just had with Rose weighed on his mind. She’d come into their room seeming so troubled and lost. The answer to her question hadn’t helped anything. Finn had managed to revive her mood by asking her about repairing the lightsaber. Once she got talking about that, Rose had become so excited and animated that both he and she managed to ignore, if not forget, what they’d discussed when she’d first walked in and sat on the bed.

Rose had wanted to know Kylo Ren’s real name. That was information that Finn happened to have. And the way Rose had reacted, with a mix of confusion and dawning horror, gripped him with a sunken kind of nausea as he walked toward the tarmac of the airstrip and flight deck.

Memories of Kylo Ren were not among those Finn valued highly. They haunted him most days. And he still woke sometimes thinking he was just snapping to consciousness after falling at Ren’s feet in the snow. Finn was a soldier. He’d been trained to fight. But the kind of combat he’d faced when Ren brought his lightsaber down on Finn’s borrowed blade, smashing through his defenses, stalking him like some beast defending its territory, was the stuff of nightmares and legend. The long scar Finn bore on his back, where the volatile red blade had chewed a searing line through his flesh, was a constant reminder of that nightmare, and of his failure to protect his friend.

When he thought on it, Finn had to step back and marvel at what Rey had accomplished where he’d failed. She’d been knocked unconscious when Ren flung her against a tree, but she’d been able to snap to, make her way to where Finn had fallen, retrieve the Skywalker lightsaber, and had then bested Kylo Ren in a duel. She’d even gifted him a scar of his own, an angry, snaking line from his shoulder to his right eye.

Despite that, and despite the fact that Ren was figurehead and champion of the enemy they’d all sworn to defeat, Rey never wanted to talk about him. Not about her victories over him. Not about her abduction by him. Not about the brief stint she spent as his prisoner in the hours before Admiral Holdo destroyed the Supremacy.

Telling Rose about Ren’s identity wasn’t something he felt guilty for doing. He had known he would tell her eventually. Still, hearing it couldn’t have been easy for her. Learning the truth had been disorienting enough to learn for him, standing on a viewing platform in the oscillator shaft on Starkiller Base.

He and Rey had both watched as Ren had lured his own father out onto the catwalk that spanned the shaft. They had watched Ren remove his mask to reveal the young, dark-haired man beneath. And they’d watched as the man who had once been Ben Solo ignited his lightsaber, sending a rippling beam of red plasma through his father’s chest. The way Rey had screamed— a tortured, desperate cry of grief— would stay with him forever.

Those were his thoughts as he climbed the stairs from the barracks to the airstrip, and started across the tarmac to the cluster of buildings that made up the command center. The sun was high, and the white sky and gray tarmac combined to make for a blinding glare. Finn squinted, letting his eyes adjust.

About half way across, as he weaved between the X-Wings and support craft that were scattered about, he saw a blue and white Quad Jumper, its engines still cycling down after planetfall. He could already see the hulking form of Chewbacca, hauling large black crates down the boarding ramp, and could hear BB-8’s distinctive beeping. He headed over in that direction, but when he got close, he heard something he definitely hadn’t expected.

“Well, if it isn’t the big, bad rebel himself!”

Finn scanned around, and dropped his gaze to waist height to see Maz Kanata beaming up at him.

“Maz? What’re you doing here?”

The diminutive woman, with her finely wrinkled skin and custom goggles, approached him with a sly grin.

“I told you I liked that Wookiee,” she said, winking. “I heard things didn’t go quite as planned on Cantonica.”

“Yeah, we found your codebreaker. Then we got thrown in jail. And had to make do with—“

“DJ. Yes, I know. I wish I could say I was surprised, but, really, Finn, the man named himself ‘Don’t Join.’”

“Wait,” Finn said, the realization of it dawning on him. “DJ stands for ‘Don’t Join?’”

Maz raised her eyebrows and looked up at him, tapping her cap with her finger. It was then that Finn remembered DJ’s own cap, which had been fitted with a metal plate bearing the words, “Don’t Join” in standard Aurebesh.

“I feel really stupid now.”

“Maz!”

Rey’s voice rang out from across the strip, and she jogged the short distance to where Maz stood, dropped to a knee and gave her a welcoming hug.

“Now I know what took Chewie so long,” Rey said, pulling back from the embrace.

“Child, look at you.” Maz regarded Rey with a motherly smile. “All grown up now.”

“Come on,” Rey said, smirking, “it’s only been a few months.”

“Yes, but you’ve come of age. You’re not the frightened girl I saw on Takodana. Then, when I told you to take that,” Maz nodded toward the lightsaber hanging from Rey’s belt, “you ran from it like it might bite you.”

“I wasn’t ready. You told me to feel the Light, that it would guide me. And I think it has.”

Maz took a half step closer to Rey, raising her small hand to the younger woman’s chin.

“Did you ever find him?”

“Luke? Yes—“

“Rey,” Maz said with a purposeful tone, peering at her through her goggles.

“Yes,” Rey responded after a moment. She was smiling softly, her voice hushed. “I found him.”

“Oh, child. Does she know?”

Rey nodded and said, “I told her.”

A few moments passed, and Maz cocked her head, favoring Finn with a sidelong glance.

“Well, it’s hot,” Maz announced, straightening to full height. “I’m going inside.” She cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted, much louder than it seemed should be possible for someone so small, “Chewbacca! Are you really going to make me walk all the way across this airfield?”

Chewie responded with a plaintive sound in shryiiwook, bent down, and Maz scurried up onto his shoulder.

“I feel like I just eavesdropped on something I wasn’t supposed to hear,” Finn said as Chewie and Maz disappeared into the base.

“Maz is over a thousand years old, Finn,” Rey said as she stood up and dusted off her trousers. “She probably views secrets and privacy as something quaint. Temporary.”

“Was that something secret?”

“Everyone knows about Luke. I suppose not everyone knows I went to find him, despite Poe’s best attempts.”

“I heard about your argument.”

“Finn, it’s fine.”

“Poe’s only trying to look out for everyone. You, too. He just gets a little... passionate about it.”

“I know that. I’m— I feel much better now.”

“Rose told me you guys almost blew up the Falcon a few times,” he said, nodding in the direction of the old freighter. “She was way too excited about it.”

“We didn’t almost blow up the Falcon,” Rey said, then paused, thinking. “All right. Maybe once.”

Finn looked down at the lightsaber. It hung from the clip on her belt like it was the most natural thing there was. The weld she and Rose had done was hardly noticeable, and the chromed durasteel gleamed with flashes of white as she moved.

“How’s it feel to have that back?”

“It feels great,” Rey said, glancing down. “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.”

Finn was thinking about having used the saber. The heft of it. The droning vibration from the center of the hilt. The way it sang and whined as it burned slashes of light through the air. It was, without a doubt, a beautiful weapon. But Finn also remembered that from the moment he’d ignited the blade, something had felt wrong, and the hum of the blade had sent subtle tremors convulsing up and down his arms. He’d switched back to a blaster the first chance he got.

“Finn,” a voice called from the entrance to the base. A crewman in a flight suit stood there, waving him down. “General Dameron wanted to see you in the command center.”

Finn acknowledged the crewman and gave Rey a parting smile.

“Duty calls. I’d better go see what that’s about.”

***

The Resistance was preferable to the First Order in almost every conceivable way, but there was one category in which Finn was constantly frustrated by the fledgling rebellion: chain of command. The First Order’s command hierarchy was rigid and absolute. Every stormtrooper and deck officer knew exactly to whom they were accountable, and that chain extended in a direct line all the way from mess cook to Supreme Leader.

Here, however, Finn rarely knew who was in charge of what, and duties were assumed, transferred, and neglected seemingly at random. That hadn’t improved with Poe taking over command decisions, as the former pilot was the kind of leader who preferred to see things done as he needed them, and couldn’t be bothered with the menial tasks that kept the lights on.

The command center was similarly disorganized. Much like the same facility on D’Qar, it was a dusty and beaten collection of old tech, customized terminals, and countless different devices that had seen one too many uses over their lifetimes. Poe kept a small office off to the side of the open design of the main center, but it was little more than a place for private conversations, because the general didn’t even have a permanent terminal installed. In fact, when Finn walked in, Poe was standing by the table, leaning over a mobile terminal.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, Finn, close the door.”

Finn pulled the door closed and came around the table. Poe was looking at a gallery of reconnaissance photos taken from one of the hyper-light speed probes the Resistance had dispatched throughout First Order controlled space.

“What’s up, Poe?”

“We got a hold of recon footage from some First Order installations on Naboo. I didn’t want anyone else to know about it until we had a chance to figure out what they were. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

Finn leaned in and looked closer. The photos showed a spherical space station in high orbit above the planet. It had odd depressions evenly spaced over its surface, and looked to be the size of a small moon. Beyond that, on the planet below, was a ring of structures that Finn couldn’t quite make out.

“Looks like the Death Star.”

“But smaller,” Poe said, rubbing his chin. “A lot smaller.”

“Do you have any higher res images of those surface structures?”

“Yeah, hold on. Here.”

“Looks like a command center for the orbital station. But, wait. Look. There.”

“What? I don’t see—“

“Move your finger. I can’t see— the one you’re pointing with.”

“What, here?”

“You’re not going to be able to see it if you— do you have a bigger picture?”

Poe moved his hands entirely out of the way and punched up some images with surface recon in higher resolution. The structures were spaced evenly in a circular ring, and they were all connected by massive cables that looked like spokes on a wheel. At the center was a tower of some kind, but it wasn’t immediately clear what its purpose could be. The other structures, however, were much more straightforward for Finn.

“Yeah. Look. Those spires. There. And there. They’re like the beam containment array from Starkiller.”

“You think they’re turning Naboo into another Starkiller Base?”

“It’d be a surefire way to make sure no one ever tries to blow it up. How many people live on Naboo? A billion? More?”

Poe’s mouth had dropped open, and his usually ruddy face was suddenly ashen.

“Even if they are,” Finn said, quickly, “and I’m not saying they are, it’ll take years to drill to the planet core. They haven’t even started. And anyway, they’re not going to drain Naboo’s sun for power. It doesn’t add up. Plus, what’s with the station in orbit? It looks like it’s geosynchronous to the tower on the surface. It’s got to be connected in some way. First Order technologists aren’t about showy artistic displays.”

“Under Snoke, maybe. With ‘Hugs’ and Ren running the show, I’m prepared for anything.” Poe sat down on the single chair in the room. “So, what, you think it might be something else? A shield generator, maybe? Like on Endor with the second Death Star?”

“Could be. But you’re right. That station looks pretty small to house the kind of reactor you’d need to produce one of those beams.”

“I don’t like it. Something seems funny about the whole thing.”

The door opened, and Connix peered around the corner.

“Gener— Poe, there’s an incoming transmission,” she paused, taking a second to glance at Finn before continuing, “from our munitions depot on Taris.”

“Patch it through,” Poe said without a beat.

The transmission came through to the mobile terminal. A Resistance officer Finn had never seen was broadcasting from a very dark room, and the holo-projection was garbled with static.

“General, a First Order Star Destroyer has— of light speed in orbit— location.”

“How the— did someone talk?”

“I don’t know. They— any moves yet, but if they do, we don’t— manpower to hold them off for long.”

“Are the compound shields active?”

“They are, General.”

“Hang tight, Captain. We’re sending a team to extract you.”

“Sir— area— difficult to navigate. Advise any landing party to— we haven’t had— old rail terminal—“

“We’re losing them! Connix, why are we losing them?”

“Jammed at the source,” Connix shouted from the other room.

“Son of a bitch!” Poe picked up the projector and chucked it against the window.

“We have a munitions depot on Taris?” Finn asked. It was the first he’d heard of such a thing.

Taris was an Outer Rim planet dominated by large cityscapes, like Coruscant. Unlike Coruscant, however, Taris’ affluent population lived in soaring high rises, above a smog line that covered most of the planet’s surface in a permanent haze. Below the smog line was a tangled sprawl of crumbling cities, starship wreckage, uncharted swampland, and junk and miscellany from all over the galaxy. If you wanted to lose something, putting it on the surface of Taris was a pretty safe bet.

“It’s— it’s a long story, Finn. We have to get those people out of there.”

“Poe, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Finn,” Poe began, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ll see when you get there. I— how many people will we need to counter a First Order ground assault?”

“In an urban theater?”

“It’s more like ruins, or wreckage, but there are civilians in the area.”

Finn thought a moment. The conditions could allow for a smaller force to be more effective. But, knowing the First Order, they’d land as many troops as could be spared, and have them fan out through all the structures in the region.

“A hundred. Preferably more.”

“We have fifty.”

Finn furrowed his brow. It wouldn’t work. Fifty men in that kind of place could get bogged down, easily split, boxed in by superior numbers in tight spaces. It wasn’t like they could just blast walls apart or clear rubble on a whim without—

“We have fifty,” Finn said, his face brightening. “And one Jedi with a working lightsaber.”

Chapter 20: The Tinkerer

Summary:

This chapter picks up where General Hux's conversation with the bounty hunter, Vyada Nil, left off in Chapter 10. After the first break, it resumes following the confrontation Hux had with Kylo in Chapter 13.

“Name your price.”

“The pretender’s lightsaber.”

Hux’s lips drew into a tight, thin smile.

“Done.”

“You’re awfully confident,” Nil said with an air of disinterest. “How do you intend to deliver?”

“Ren is a madman,” Hux said, lowering his voice even though, since he’d ordered Peavey and the troops into the transport, he and the hunter were the only people in the entire hangar. “Raging at shadows. Secluded. He rarely leaves his chambers.”

“But you need methods to neutralize his abilities.”

Hux grit his teeth and clicked his tongue.

“Sorcery and mummer’s slight,” he seethed. “But it’s damned effective, I’ll give him that.”

“Point a hundred blasters at him. He can’t block them all.”

“Very funny. Ren may be mad, but he’s not a fool. He won’t walk into an ambush unless he’s blinded by another concern.”

“The girl,” Nil asserted without hesitation.

“Yes. The girl.”

“Who is she to him?”

“She’s a nobody. A skittering sand rat Ren took a liking to before she opened up his face. Now he’s obsessed with vengeance, and insists he’s honor bound to deal with her himself.”

Nil regarded him with what Hux initially took for amusement, but her tone when she spoke was hard and knife-edged.

“And who are you to deny him his prize?”

Hux’s response was immediate.

“An opportunist.”

The corner of Nil’s mouth twitched into a slight smirk.

“What do you need from me?”

“The Jedi girl. Arrange for her to crawl out from whatever warren she’s been hiding in, and I’ll make sure Ren is there to stake his claim.”

“Draw her in as bait, then kill them both, is that it?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

The hunter’s eyes narrowed a moment.

“No.”

“That’s— I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting that answer.”

“It is as I’ve said. You are a liar and a coward. And a thief. And so you must be cunning.”

“You walk a very narrow line, hunter.”

“And you haven’t said all, General.”

“No. I haven’t,” Hux said, his tone sharpening. Contracting the hunter was an awful risk, but one Hux was more than willing to accept provided certain assurances. “If I deliver Ren to you, and you fail, I need some measure of surety.”

Nil didn’t react with umbrage, as Hux expected. She instead adopted the same cool, disaffected posture as she had since she’d finished her demonstration.

“Do you expect me to fail?”

“I expect you to perform as you’ve advertised,” Hux answered, almost lashing back at the towering figure. “But I also know Ren to be a formidable man. If you fail, he will come for me. And I will not die roasted on the end of a plasma spit or on my knees gasping for breath because a bounty hunter with a lightsaber couldn’t deliver on her boasts.”

Nil didn’t react. She stared down at him with those black, depthless eyes, and for a few seconds, Hux began to feel a slow crawl of terror coil in his throat. He didn’t think the hunter would be so bold or suicidal to try anything, but, at the same time, there was something about this woman that unnerved him to his foundations. Maybe that’s why he was so sure she could succeed.

The hunter stepped in closer, and Hux flinched. Nil spoke in an insistent, knowing tone that communicated experience. She projected cold efficiency. Hux knew a killer when he saw one, and this one was clothed in all the trappings of death. And more than that, she was driven by some bristling urgency that Hux couldn’t fully comprehend.

“Shield your thoughts. Project strong emotions. Fear. Hate. Anger. He is wed to the darkness and will sense these first. It will conceal your intentions.”

Nil paused, and unclipped a silver disc with rounded edges from a hidden firing chamber in her arm guard. She handed it to Hux.

“This will deprive him of his senses. But only for a moment,” she continued, and then slid one of her long, gloved fingers behind her ear, producing a small bluish device that emitted a constant, barely perceptible hum. “Place this behind one of your ears before you activate it. The rest is your doing.”

Hux took the hunter’s tools and pocketed them.

“You can collect your payment from his corpse. After it’s done, vanish.”

“Then we have a contract.”

“So we do,” Hux said, stepping away from Nil. He watched her as she returned to her ship, still wary, and didn’t return to the transport until she and her vessel were safely out of sight.

***

The hours after Hux discovered Ren in his personal suite, hovering over his private terminal, had been among the most panicked and unsettled of his life. He’d stood in the middle of the room for long minutes following Ren’s departure, blood still slamming through his limbs and neck as his heart refused to calm. But once he’d escaped his own spellbound paralysis, he’d found that he could scarcely keep from moving.

It wasn’t difficult to follow the track Ren had cut through the terminal’s security. The extent to which the Supreme Leader had discovered plans Hux had counted on remaining unnoticed gave the general cause to fear Ren might return at any moment to retract his earlier mercy. So, Hux set himself to the task of destroying what could be destroyed, hiding what could be hidden, and sorting through what remained.

Ren’s intrusion had forced Hux to make decisions that should have been weeks in the offing. The emitter stations. The command centers. The hybrid beam arrays. The new stormtrooper protocols. At least Ren hadn’t discovered the dossiers Hux had collected in his search for a suitable hunter. And that was another thing. He had left himself dependent upon this hunter for his next move. Without the Jedi girl as bait, he knew he’d never be able to spur Ren to the kind of mistake he’d need for his opening. Unless—

He thumbed the disc in his pocket.

He could do it. Place the right soldiers in the corridor leading to Ren’s chambers. Contrive some reason to require an audience. Use the hunter’s sonic tool. And put an end to this ludicrous farce for good. Sitting at his terminal, Hux tugged idly at the slip cord in the sleeve of his jacket. Just one flick of the wrist, a moment’s courage, and the First Order would have a new destiny.

He remembered the hunter’s words. Shield your thoughts. Project strong emotions. It will conceal your intentions. Ren inspired enough fear and hatred in him that he wasn’t concerned about suffering a deficit of either. But his intentions were so tied to those emotions that he somehow knew, at a fundamental level, that the Supreme Leader would anticipate the attack. No. Hux knew he would have to exercise some patience.

Ren only had a partial understanding of what Hux had set in motion over the previous months. At most, Ren knew that Hux had been requisitioning large kyber crystals. He likely knew that a massive kyber heart had been located and was on board. It was possible that he’d seen the early proposals for new Starkiller Bases. But, what Hux was sure of was that Ren had not seen beyond those initial proposals.

Ren had been right that Hux had ambitions beyond a Star Destroyer fleet and a standing army. But he’d been wrong about the shape of those ambitions. Hux didn’t want a new Starkiller. He wanted something far more durable.

It had been the dream of the ancient Sith to construct and wield a spacefaring mobile command center equipped with a weapon capable of destroying a planet. That dream had been realized by Emperor Palpatine, and had twice been dashed by a combination of rebel bravery, acts of treason, and the Emperor’s own hubris. Supreme Leader Snoke had thought he’d solved Palpatine’s primary error by designing a weapon that was both substantially better fortified than a mere space station, and produced a beam of kyber plasma that created its own hyperspace channels as it traveled. A fearsome, impressive machine that had been developed at no small cost.

That Starkiller Base ever existed at all was all the evidence Hux needed that miracles could be realized through force of will alone. The planet that became Starkiller had been selected for its size and the presence of a powerful magnetic dynamo in its core. The core had been penetrated and fitted with a kyber array that made the Death Star’s reactor sequence look like a handheld blaster. That kyber array, augmented by the powerful magnetic field, had allowed the planet itself to enter hyperspace, and nothing had ever compared, he thought, to the sensation of standing on solid ground, watching as the sky lensed away into warps of starlight and void-black.

But for all of its technological prowess, the destruction of Starkiller had been ten minutes’ work: the product of the twin defects of design overreach and poor planning. When the planet had been destroyed, no one wept, for no one truly lived there. And the weapon itself required such a massive amount of power storage that any small interruption in the energy diffusion would prove fatal. And, of course, that’s just what happened.

Armitage Hux envisioned a galaxy ruled by the simple application of fear. Fear could be allayed by prediction. Fear could be assuaged by acceptance of the inevitable. But fear could not be overcome if the object of that fear could strike without warning. Now that such a weapon was within his grasp, Hux had no intention of stopping short.

Kylo Ren was a living anachronism, Hux thought, bitterly. An ascetic zealot willing to allow his conquest to wither in its nascency over a slight to his personal pride. A cruel child whose tantrums threatened the endeavor to which Hux had devoted his life. A man with no direction or conviction other than devotion to a religion whose adherents were all either dead or cloistered in madhouses. He had to die.

The hours passed in silence. The general moved the pieces on his chessboard. Hux traced the metal edge of the monomolecular dagger inside the lining of his sleeve. And he stared intently into the empty spaces of his quarters, transfixed by phantasms of empire.

***

Hux didn’t sleep that night. The morning cycle arrived to find him still at his terminal. At some point during the night, he’d unholstered his sidearm, and had it sitting on the desk in front of him. So, when the holo-projector began pinging its shrill alarm at him, he’d trained the weapon on it and almost fired.

He shook his head hard and put the gun back in its holster, clicking on the projector as he did.

“Good morning, General.”

“Captain, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your communications brief.”

“Yes, of course, sir, but the Star Destroyer Volition has reported following up on the intelligence you forwarded.”

“What intelligence?”

“About the Resistance depot on Taris. Captain Eskat said you transmitted the data several hours ago.”

Hux grasped for a coherent thought. His brain was addled from paranoia and lack of sleep.

“From what channel?”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“The transmission, you dolt. From what channel was I meant to have sent it?”

“I—“ Peavey called to a communications officer outside of the projection range. “Check that transmission source. Any moment now, sir.”

What was Ren’s game? Had he sent the transmission remotely using Hux’s terminal codes? Had he set it to automatically transmit, and it had just slipped Hux’s attention during the night? The general kept at it, considering every option, barely noticing that his hand, resting on the desk, shook with a violent tremor.

“Here we are, General,” Peavey said brightly. “Emergency channel 927. Classified protocol. Clearance code: Opportunity.”

Hux snapped up, and whipped around to face the projection.

“Set course to Taris. And ready the division.”

“Of course, sir. And the Volition?”

“Tell her to hold until we arrive. Inform Captain Eskat the Supreme Leader will want to handle this personally.”

“Yes, General. Shall I alert Supreme Leader Ren?”

“No,” Hux said, grinning wide, “I’ll handle this myself.”

Chapter 21: Rey

It was a new world.

It had seemed, at some points during the months since she’d been whisked away from the life of solitude and misery she’d known on Jakku, that the world had indeed been remade. When she’d first seen the green expanse of forests as the Falcon pierced the veil of clouds over Takodana. When she’d been born to her powers as she and Ben had first joined minds. When they’d reached for each other in their loneliness and discovered the boundless hope held fast in the promise of what could be.

But there had been nothing that had ever approached what happened the night before. And as Rey sits alone in the cockpit of the Falcon, letting her mind drift to memory, a smile that lingers on that same hopeful promise touches her lips.

In truth, she hadn’t really known if the crystal would be healed by the act of she and Ben joining the two halves. But when she’d touched her half to his, and the stone’s song built and spread through them both, she had felt him as she’d never done before. And the vision that had bloomed within her had taken hold with such power that she was sure she would be swept under, enclosed in the embrace of its silken web, never to revive. What she had seen was a gift from the Force. Like the vision she’d seen on Ahch-To, she knew it was only another promise of what could be, but that spark of hope now burned ever brighter within her. It was secret, a delicate pearl for her to hold in her heart, and it was hers alone.

Rey sits in the pilot’s seat, cradling her newly repaired lightsaber, awash in the sensation of the crystal keening with the Force, blending with her own energies to make one song. When she’d first ignited the saber, in the forest on Starkiller Base, the vibration of the crystal had felt welcoming, but unfamiliar, as though it were a friend greeting a wayward companion after a long separation. Now, having brought that same power coursing through the rejoined kyber, the weapon feels like an extension of herself, an expression of light shaded by the dark promise of justice.

Rey understands now that the crystals are bonded to their owners— or, perhaps, their partners— in a similar way that she is bonded to Ben, and he to her. She can feel the bond between herself and the crystal in her saber, and it is powerful, built upon the crystal having chosen her, and she having proven worthy of that trust. She knows, just as she knows that she can lift her arm or twitch her finger when she so wishes, that if she were to summon her saber through the Force, it would leap to her hand in a smooth, unimpeded arc, with no hesitation.

It makes her think of the way she had called, almost without thinking, to Ben’s saber in Snoke’s throne room. How it had flown to her hand with no resistance. How the blade had leapt to life without her pressing the ignition switch. She can almost feel the resonance of his crystal as she recalls it. It had been familiar and gentle, yielding to her requests. But it had also been choked by howling pain, simultaneously relieved and confused to be asked to do something rather than commanded.

Just like Ben, she thinks. And maybe that’s what the crystals really are: reflections of the self. Rey had never asked Ben how his crystal became cracked, but she’s begun to suspect. The reality of that suspicion fills her with a sadness to which she could scarcely give voice, but that reality is coupled with her knowledge that whatever violence he’d inflicted on himself in his quest to conquer his own mind and soul, he had never succeeded in destroying Ben Solo. Ben was alive, and she’d seen him, really seen him, for the first time last night.

She can sense Ben now stronger than ever, not as a solid presence or as a voice in her mind, and not even as an impression of his thoughts and emotions. Instead, the feeling of him, of his distinct echo in the Force, clings to her like cool mist just above her skin. The thread of their bond, no longer the fragile thing it once was, shines more brightly than any light she’s known. And, though she now knows better than to try to pull on that thread, its presence comforts and fortifies her, and a serenity she’s never achieved alone attends her. They’ll be together again. She knows it.

As the call goes out on the loudspeaker, and over the Falcon’s comm, for all personnel to report to the command center, Rey understands that things are being set in motion that she cannot control. But that lack of control no longer frightens her. She is not alone. And neither is he. She clips her lightsaber to her belt, rises to her feet, and makes her way out to the Vedician day, the sky blazing white and brilliant as the light at the center of a flame.

***

The command center is alive with nervous energy as all available soldiers, crewmen, pilots, engineers, and other Resistance members crowd around the holo-display at the center of the room. Like the war room on the Raddus, the command center’s war room is arranged in a round, with step-like benches encircling the speaker’s stage. Now, instead of Leia or Holdo or Ackbar, the stage is held by Poe Dameron and Finn, who stand amidst the projection of a star system with which few of them are familiar.

Rey finds Rose quickly and takes a seat next to her. She can immediately sense Rose is troubled, but that’s understandable. The last time there was a muster like this, it was for the assault on Starkiller Base, something Rey hadn’t been present for, but had heard about plenty.

“Are you all right?” Rey asks her.

“Oh, I’m fine. I still have at least one fingernail left that hasn’t been chewed down to the bone.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Something about a distress call from one of our supply caches. I don’t know much else.”

She wants to say something to calm her friend, but she senses Rose’s fear is couched in concerns far deeper than those at hand. Rey suddenly recognizes that this fear had been present in her earlier, just after they’d repaired the lightsaber together. At the time, Rey had been so fixed on her own elation at having restored the crystal to its proper place that she failed to notice the growing doubt in Rose’s mind.

“Rose,” Rey starts to say, but she never finishes because Poe is clearing his throat and directing everyone’s attention to the center of the room.

“All right, listen up, people. We’ve received a distress call from our remote munitions depot on Taris. I know most of you weren’t aware we had a facility there, but let’s just say that the weapons there in storage aren’t just valuable. They’re irreplaceable. And that’s to say nothing of the twenty or so Resistance fighters who’ve been working there for the past month.”

Poe moves aside as the holo projection zooms in on a mid-sized planet in the system. It’s immediately clear that Taris is densely populated, as the half that’s shaded in night is dotted and streaked with city lights. But the planet is also shrouded in a layer of orange-gold clouds, and it looks like the cities that can be seen from space are actually sitting atop those clouds. Or, Rey thinks, the buildings are just so tall they reach above them.

“About an hour ago, our people on the ground reported that the Star Destroyer Volition had dropped out of light speed and is now positioned above the depot in low orbit. Transmissions are now being jammed at the source, and it’s only a matter of time before the First Order begins a ground assault. Finn?”

Finn steps forward, gesturing around the display with an easy confidence. He’s in his element, Rey thinks, and it occurs to her that Finn, with his military background, his simple, unpolluted sense of moral right, and his intrinsic understanding of the First Order, is where he belongs: leading.

“The drop zone we’re looking at isn’t ideal. Scratch that. It’s terrible. We’ll have to land our craft over here,” Finn says, pointing to a relatively flat clearing beyond the mess of buildings and wreckage, “and make our way through the streets to here, this old rail terminal.”

“Why not land our ships at that airdrome tower there?” Rose asks, pointing to a prominent structure not far from the old rail station.

“No good,” Finn says thoughtfully, “The First Order will land their craft at that thing for sure. From there, they’ll deploy to the surrounding structures and form a perimeter around the terminal. There’s a lot of debris and wreckage, so it’ll be slow going for them.”

“How many enemy troops should we expect?” asks a soldier in the back row.

“This kind of operation, I’d guess two to three hundred. Light infantry. Air support is unlikely because of the heavy smog and urban terrain.”

Finn had kept speaking, but the room had nearly erupted at the mention of the number of troops Finn expected. Even as he continued his analysis, there was a steady din of nervous chatter.

“All right, all right,” Poe steps in, quieting the room. “We’ve always been at a disadvantage. From the very beginning. But none of you has ever doubted. We’re going to do this. We’re going to get our people out. And we’re going to send a message to the galaxy that we’re still here. That we never went anywhere.”

He nods again to Finn, who continues.

“Those numbers aren’t nearly as scary as they seem. They’re overkill for this kind of operation, but that’s what the First Order does: surround and overwhelm. It’s gonna be slow going for them coming from the airdrome. From our approach point,” Finn says, showing the route planned through the old city streets, “we should be able to cut a quicker path through the ruins, get in, and get out, hopefully without too much of a firefight.”

“What about obstructions? Debris?” asks another soldier.

“Well,” Finn says, and looks to Rey. “we were hoping that’s where Rey would come in.”

She gives him an easy smirk and answers as brightly as she can manage.

“What, lifting rocks? No problem.”

Finn smiles back as small pockets of laughter ease the mood. Poe steps forward again.

“We get one shot at this,” Poe says, adopting the resolute tone that won him his position. “We don’t succeed, and the First Order will seize those weapons and our people are as good as dead. One hour to hyperspace jump, ninety minutes to planetfall on Taris. Move out. And may the Force be with you.”

The personnel in attendance all get to their feet, and the center comes to life again, now with a swarm of movement. Rey reaches out to catch Rose’s arm before she heads off to the flight deck.

“Rose, come with us,” Rey says, gauging the uncertainty in her eyes.

“What, me? On an extraction? Where there’s probably going to be a firefight?”

“I don’t know why. I just have a feeling. That we’ll need you.”

It was true. Rey hadn’t thought to ask Rose to come along on the mission, but now that she’s said it, it feels entirely right.

“Someone has to keep Chewie company while we’re out there,” Rey continues, smirking. “It’s terribly lonely on the Falcon now that the porgs are gone.”

Rose returns Rey’s smile with a weak one of her own, and she looks uneasy. Rey senses the deep confusion roiling in her friend, but the thoughts that would give shape to that confusion are hidden. Rey knows how it feels, to shield your mind from thoughts that come unbidden. Keeping a secret is hard enough under normal circumstances; keeping one from yourself, to preserve the fictions that hold your world together, is an exercise in torment.

But Rose eventually nods, and Rey smiles at her again. They part ways, Rose toward the equipment shed, and Rey toward the airfield, knowing that whatever is in store, it’s unlikely to go anything close to plan.

***

Back at the Falcon, Rey finds Chewie already making final preparations for takeoff. She makes sure to give him a little hell about taking so long off-planet with Maz, and he makes sure to respond with an endearing sound that Rey understands to mean something close to, “You’re one to talk.”

Rey has to laugh at that. She likely wouldn’t have several days before. But Chewie, she reminds herself, is almost three hundred years old himself, and he probably knows far more than anyone else about what’s been going on with her for the past months.

She does her own systems checks, and gets the soldiers and Rose settled on the ship. Coming back down the ramp, she notes the time. There’s a true Vedic sunset happening, and the sun, low on the horizon, stains the sky with blasts of red and yellow. She looks around the airfield and sees the bustle of action, the most this base has seen since they established it weeks ago. From that bustle, Finn crosses to the ship, a blaster holstered on his hip, a new rifle slung on his back, and a plastene plate beneath the jacket he’d worn on every mission since they’d met on Jakku.

“Rose told me the Force said she had to come with us.”

“I did not say that,” Rey says, and Finn cocks an eyebrow. “All right, I didn’t quite say that. It was implied.”

Finn smiles from the bottom of the ramp, but the smile is strained, and it fades.

“Rey,” Finn starts, his eyes communicating that inimitable sense of sincerity and trust, “she asked me something earlier, and I was meaning to talk to you about it.”

Rey can sense that Finn shares the same feeling of conflict and confusion as Rose. That’s not uncommon, Rey’s learned. Since she’s been able to sense emotions more keenly, she’s noticed that people who are intimate tend to share hopes and fears far more extensively than even they realize.

“Right after she came back from helping you with the lightsaber,” Finn continues, lowering his voice, “she asked me if I knew Kylo’s real name. So, I told her.”

“Oh, Finn,” Rey says in a whisper, not having meant to say anything at all.

“Look,” he went on, “everyone’s going to know eventually. It’s amazing the two of us have kept it secret this long. It’s just, I’m trying to figure out why she wanted to know all of a sudden. She said you guys talked about Darth Vader, but, that seemed like something she was telling me to get me to stop asking questions.”

It all makes sense. Rose’s reticence and fear. The hesitant confusion. Rey remembers now having almost said Ben’s name when talking about his lightsaber. And then, later, when she’d told Rose that not everyone who does monstrous things chooses to be a monster. She’s confident that Rose’s confusion is a genuine expression of the feeling; if Rose had indeed guessed at the truth, Rey doubts she would have been able to hide it. And without being Force sensitive, divining the what was really going on would be impossible for her. Still, there was enough information available to connect at least some dots, and Rose was intuitive and smart. It wouldn’t take long.

“Finn, there’s— there’s a lot I need to tell you. I—“

The klaxons in the control tower start ringing out, and Finn puts his hand on Rey’s shoulder. 

“Hey, sorry,” he says reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it now. We’ve got a job to do. Let’s go do this, and we can talk about all this stuff later.”

Rey nods, and Finn smiles at her and heads up the ramp. Rey follows behind, punches the ramp controls, and engages the flight lock. Then she heads to the cockpit, where she finds Chewie. She sits down in the pilot’s seat, and begins the takeoff sequence.

She still feels some of the peace she felt earlier. Even as she is headed into a battle. Even as her friends’ suspicions are mounting. Even as Ben is in another part of the galaxy on the other side of a war. Because she can still feel his cool embrace on her skin. And she can still sense the shining thread that connects them. And she knows that the Light will guide her as she pulls the lever on the instrument panel and the stars bleed away into a tunnel of black and blue and white.

Chapter 22: Kylo

The past had died.

Or part of it had. The part laced through with venom and pretensions to legacy. The months since he’d tracked Lor San Tekka to the enclave on Jakku had seen the collapse of his foundations. One by one, what he’d once viewed as essential pillars of what it meant to be Kylo Ren had been smashed apart, and most of it had been done by his own hand. The murder of his father, which had exposed Snoke for the pestilence he was. His inability to harm his mother, which had reminded him of what it was to love and be loved. His defiance in saving Rey from death, which freed him from the yoke of his decrepit master. Because the bastard would not have her, too.

But there had been nothing that had ever approached what happened the night before. And as Kylo sits in the chair in his meditation chamber, letting his mind settle on the memories of what were, he is visited by the stark collision of feeling that assaults him: revulsion at what he’d witnessed; adoration for the woman who’d been there to catch him as he fell.

He’d been certain Rey was mistaken about the cure for her issue with the kyber crystal. But, in the moment just before their two halves touched, his mind had cleared, and he could feel the Force anchored in the crystal halves aching to rejoin what had been broken. And the vision that had dragged him away from her had seized upon him with such mirthless intensity he’d been sure that he would be drawn into the morass of bitter cruelty into which he’d fallen, abandoned to suffocation. What he had seen was a gift from the Force. Like the vision he’d seen on Ahch-To, he knew what he’d seen was the perfect truth of the past, unadorned by the decay of memory. It was a vision of death and horror, a view of the slow erosion of humanity inside a husk that was once a good man.

Kylo sits across from the mask of Darth Vader, infected by the sensations that linger from his vision. When he’d first realized whose life he was seeing, his reaction was one of disbelief, even though he knew the Force had merely been showing him what it was to be Anakin Skywalker in that time and place. He had spent so long elevating the deeds and accomplishments of the mask on display that he never stopped to consider the man beneath it. Now, having lived in the bone strewn furnace of Anakin’s mind and soul as he transformed into a deformity of spirit, the mask has adopted a different shape: a blot of darkness accented by the scorching threat of revenge.

Kylo accepts now that his grandfather had been fooled and seduced by the poisons of a man not unlike Snoke. He could sense the miasma of toxins pluming around Palpatine the moment he’d commanded Anakin to murder his prisoner in the throne room. But the monster on the throne had only represented the path to darkness. Anakin had chosen, one fateful decision after another, to stride confidently into shadow. And Kylo knows, just as he knows he will walk under this plague shroud no longer, that were he confronted with the same choices, he would not have fallen to the depths that claimed his grandfather.

Thinking of it sends a crawl of cold slime retching in his throat. Watching as Anakin cleaved and stabbed smoking plasma wounds into the flesh of terrified children. Watching as Anakin stalked and thrilled in the slaughter of those who’d welcomed him as an ally. Watching as Anakin Skywalker ignored the frightened pleas of the woman he claimed to love, reveling in his fury as he choked her into submission.

Grandmother. Padmé Amidala. A queen. A senator. A woman of pride and accomplishment. Laid low and murdered. By the man who’d sold his soul in the vain quest to shelter her from death. How her strength had reminded him of Rey. How he’d wanted to shatter the illusion of the vision, wrest control of the man whose actions had doomed her to a miserable end, and cause him to fall on his saber blade, or to attack Palpatine, or to cast himself into the lava flow at Mustafar. She had deserved better than the death she suffered, and the injustice of it screams in his soul as he imagines himself confronted with the visions that afflicted Anakin.

He can sense Rey now stronger than ever, and it’s present in her strength and her calm, her essential goodness, the grace and beauty of her bearing. The glow of her light now resides within him. The constant lantern at his side has now become a comforting warmth that swells in his chest. And where there had once been an emptiness suffused with doubt, he is now bolstered with courage, raised up by the foundation of her resolve. He is finished with this pointless charade. His place is with her. He’s known it for a long time, and only now has he clarity enough to recognize it.

As the comm at his private terminal starts sounding an alert, Kylo accepts that the events ahead will carry him forward to the destiny he is meant to find. And ceding control to whatever cosmic power brought he and Rey together has freed him to do what he could not before. It isn’t too late. And he knows what he has to do. He stands up, taking the mask in his hands, and places it in his waste disposal unit. Without ceremony or pause, he closes the lock, pulls the release, and walks away, not even bothering to watch as its contents are ejected into the void of space.

***

The war room aboard the Finalizer is much like those in other First Order warships: a long black table ringed with high backed chairs, flanked by banks of windows that amount to viewing platforms for the entire vessel. The table, fitted with inset holo-projectors, stretches the length of the room, and is now populated by severe men in black officers’ uniforms, all waiting on the arrival of high command.

Kylo strides into the room, taking stock of the emotions of the officers. Fear is high, and there are surges of confusion and anxiety as his presence is acknowledged. But, rather than use the Force to amplify their unease, Kylo makes a simple gesture before being seated, and everyone else follows suit.

“Supreme Leader,” General Hux salutes.

“What’s the situation?” Kylo asks without looking at him.

A display of the Tarisian star system springs up above the table, and the zoom function of the projector zeroes in on the third planet from the star, a tawny orange ball spiderwebbed with artificial lights. Kylo was well aware of Taris, as it had long existed as one of the most densely populated planets in the entire galaxy. Some even said its colossal cities existed before Coruscant’s, but such were tales left to legend. The boutiques and salons of the upper cities didn’t concern him. The matter at hand, he knows, will be decided in the mangled collapse of concrete and steel that exists on the surface.

“The Star Destroyer Volition followed up on intelligence we received several days ago about a possible Resistance presence on Taris.”

“I’m guessing that presence is below the smog line.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux continues. “We’ve learned that there is a munitions cache of some considerable size housed in a facility beneath a derelict rail terminal.”

“What kind of munitions?”

“Small arms, though it seems they are of the rarer sort.”

“Meaning?”

“Ion disruptor rifles.”

Kylo stops a moment. He is unused to being genuinely surprised by anything. But this is a true shock.

“T-7’s?”

“And a few T-8’s, so far as we’ve been able to tell,” a lower ranking general chimes in.

“You’re sure this is Resistance,” Kylo presses. “Collecting weapons that were outlawed by the Empire.”

“Desperation will drive even the noblest men to questionable means for their ends,” Hux opines, and is met with nods of approval.

“If the Force is with us, who can be against us, eh?” The voice was from another ranking officer on the other side of the table. The quip elicits some choked and guarded laughter as everyone else waits for Kylo to react. And while his eyes do dart to the smug officer, whose face has drained of blood, he stays his hand, and continues on.

“Tell me about the facility.”

Hux clears his throat and continues the presentation.

“It appears to be a two-level subterranean compound with a main entrance here, and an escape tunnel here. The area has been shielded, and will withstand orbital bombardment.”

“Of course. Where’s our landing?”

“This airdrome tower seems ideal,” Captain Eskat, of the Volition, adds, his image beamed in from the bridge of his vessel. “Multiple landing pads. A variety of insertion points into the combat zone.”

“Good,” Kylo says, folding his gloved hands in front of him. “Anything else?”

“The weapons are reportedly kept in this bunker here,” Hux says, adding what Kylo interprets as a proposed course of action. “Apart from the principle of the matter, Supreme Leader, these weapons are valuable and rare commodities.”

Kylo turns slowly to face the general. He does nothing to disguise his contempt for the man. He can sense Hux’s fear like never before, a glacial contortion of terror and cowardice twisted inside this small, tired despot.

“Want one for your personal collection, Hux? Planning a disintegration or two?”

“While I’m told the experience of watching death by ion disruption is singular,” Hux says with a snide grin, “I understand the smell it produces is less than desirable.”

The thought is repellent. Kylo had never seen a disintegration before, and he’d never sought one out. Ion disruptors were among the most vicious infantry weapons in existence, capable of downing spacefaring craft with a single bolt from a shoulder fired rifle. But, beyond that, the mechanism inherent in the disruption field produced by the bolts caused living tissue to slough away with a relatively gradual outward spread. That meant a target struck with a disruptor blast would be killed, but would experience an excruciating death by melting over the course of minutes.

Hux’s obvious enthusiasm for securing the weapons distracts Kylo for a moment or two, and he combats the urge to lash out at the general, just as he’s still resisting the urge to punish the officer on the other side of the room for denigrating the Force. But the warmth within him brings him back to a place of calm, and he presses on.

“Have we intercepted any Resistance response?”

“We’ve received actionable reports of an extraction operation already underway. We expect enemy units to be in the vicinity within thirty minutes.”

“And?”

“They’re being led by the girl.”

“The Jedi.”

“I assume.”

Kylo knows now what this is. A trap. For both of them. And he knows, just as he knows that Hux will spring to betray him as soon as he steps foot off of the ship, that he’s been outmaneuvered. For the time being. What’s important now is springing the trap, and smashing it apart.

Kylo stands from his chair. Everyone in attendance does the same.

“If they aren’t already, muster the troops in the main hangar. Infiltration units. No heavy weaponry. I’ll lead the mission myself.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

As he turns to leave the room, Hux positions himself in his path.

“Supreme Leader, allow me to apologize for yesterday’s impudence. I trust exacting vengeance against this criminal will set things right.”

“I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re planning or doing,” Kylo says through his teeth, drawing to full height. “And I’m not at all interested in your apologies.”

The fear that had twisted within Hux explodes outward in an icy blast, and Kylo wants to punish him for what he’s done. He wants to punish him for what he’s going to do. But, most of all, Kylo wants to hurt General Hux. To make him suffer. For arranging this ruse. For aspiring to power he is unworthy to wield. And most of all, he wants to hurt him for putting Rey in harm’s way, and using that as bait to try to seize a throne for himself.

“It won’t happen again,” Hux stammers.

Kylo steps toward Hux, his eyes dark and burning with rage.

“See that it doesn’t.”

And Kylo can feel the fear, so potent and sharp in the general’s heart, harden to pure hatred as he makes his way for the lift, en route to the main hangar.

***

Kylo stands at the head of the company of stormtroopers and reviews them in formation, ready to board transports. He makes his comments brief.

“Once we hit the ground, fan out. Eliminate any enemy targets you encounter,” he says, calmly, with deliberation. And then his tone hardens, and each word is a knife, meant to cut each and every man present in the room. “But the girl is mine. Anyone who brings her to harm will answer to me.”

The troops salute and file into the waiting vessels. Kylo boards his command shuttle and orders the pilots to make for planetfall.

He still feels the warmth and comfort he felt from before. Even as he knows he’s walking into a trap. Even as he knows that Hux is waiting to betray him. Even as he’s descending into a wrecked and blighted war zone, knowing that somewhere down there, Rey is in danger. Because he can feel her the moment his command shuttle breaks atmosphere. And he is made strong by her strength. And he knows that whatever light remains in him is greater than just an ember as the blue-black of the starfield above dips out of sight, and the windshield of the cockpit is swallowed in a haze of gold and brown.

Chapter 23: The Matron

Maz Kanata had lived long enough to have seen her share of storms. She knew what it felt like to be at the edge of one.

The base at Vedic III was a hive of movement and bustle, and the bluish gray of night had fallen. Maz had watched the ships take off from the airstrip, each of them climbing those steep angles, aloft on the blades of blue and orange and red that painted the sky. And then they each blinked from view, pulled along the sudden currents of hyperspace.

War was a part of life, Maz thought. Just as birth and death, it would always be. After all, the essence of being was to seek one’s needs and wants, and what was war but the ultimate expression of that search? It was the distillation of collective will, and the consequence of that will as it bent to exert itself, pitched relentlessly against the needs and wants of others.

She had seen the cost of war, and the toll it exacted was never slight. In her youth, it had been the Sith Empire, stretching its blackened claws from star system to star system, descending on the innocent and the undefended without cause or mercy. Then, there had always been some black-frocked demon bearing a crimson blade and calling himself Darth this or Darth that. She could scarcely recall the number of her kin and friends had fallen to those beasts. And though they had eventually been driven back, Maz knew, deep in her bones, that in some dark region of the galaxy there was still one cruel trickster or another who’d murdered and plundered his way to calling himself Emperor. And she knew there would be yet others who would recognize that power even while seeking to usurp it.

Evil, Maz knew, was banal. And simple. And uninspired. But true evil was rare. More common were the ills of indifference, or misplaced conviction, or the slow rot of jealousy. The First Order, like the Empire before it, carried forth the power of the Dark Side like a battle standard. But the men and women who toiled under its yoke, and even those who championed its ideals, were not truly evil. As Maz looked to the sky, marveling at the sight of the stars set beside the majesty of Vedic Prime, she let out a soft sigh. The universe, and all its wonders, would continue on, and, in the long run, the concerns of a few small beings grasping to the cusp of the great mystery would have all the consequence of a mote of dust on the wind.

But such were thoughts for philosophers. And theorists. And, she thought, laughing to herself, Jedi Masters. She’d often wondered, as she’d grown older and more in tune with the subtle flow of the Force, what it would be like to be able to submerge herself in it, to explore its depths and boundaries. But, more often recently, she’d been thankful that it was only a gentle whisper on her shoulder. She’d seen the damage wrought by misread premonitions. At her age, and with her disposition, when the Force spoke to her, it only did so when its will was clear.

Which was why Maz Kanata was on Vedic III at all.

She hopped down off of the concrete block she’d been sitting on and walked the several steps down into the main command center. Being short of stature, Maz had learned, had its advantages. It allowed her to observe unnoticed. And, currently, with all the support staff and officers busy with mission logistics and tactical coordination, no one seemed to notice her as she strolled through the corridors.

Maz took a moment to glance into the main war room, the holo projection of Taris still on display, and saw the young general, Dameron, standing in the midst of his comrades, thumbing his chin nervously. She regarded him, and thought he looked the same as last she saw him: headstrong, idealistic, with a strong jaw and sharp eyes, and still having not failed enough in his short life to have learned where his strengths resided. Something told her he’d learn from his mistakes some day. But he had yet to make the mistakes that would finally teach the lesson.

She continued down the hall, knowing her destination. When the Force had first begun whispering to her of this task, she’d balked at it. But then she began to understand. And by the time she’d hailed Chewbacca, asking for a lift to the base, she’d come to terms with what role she was meant to play in this stage of events. When she’d seen Rey on the tarmac, the message had come through clear and strong. And yet, even though she’d been alive twenty times longer than most of the people on this moon, she was still apprehensive, and felt unworthy, unequal to this responsibility.

But that was the way of the Force. It did not ask if you were worthy. If you were worthy, you were asked. And so, she opened the door she’d been approaching all along, and stepped inside.

“Hey, Maz.”

Leia Organa was sitting in bed. She looked like she’d been expecting company, with the blanket pulled up onto her lap, and a chair pulled up at the bedside next to her. Regal and poised as always, Maz thought, as she crossed the room and climbed into the chair.

“Leia. I’m not going to lie. You’ve looked better.”

“If you’d said anything else, I would have known you were lying anyway.”

Leia looked tired. She had her hair pulled into a simple braid, and she wore a plain gray evening coat over a loose gown. But she favored Maz with a soft smile and her eyes danced with the same vitality and spark they had when she was young.

“How are you, child?”

“Better,” Leia said, nodding.

“I know you don’t mean your illness,” Maz said, tilting her head toward her. “I talked to Rey. On the airstrip.”

“She’s something, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

The two women sat for a few quiet moments. Maz knew that what Rey had told Leia was of great importance. And while Maz only knew the shape of the things they spoke of, the fundamental elements were known to her: Rey had been meant to find Ben Solo in the darkness, and to offer him a hand to pull him back toward the Light. But Maz had seen something more in Rey’s eyes, and knew that the hand had indeed been offered, but that something deeper had taken root. And Leia knew it, too.

These were things both Maz and Leia knew need not be said aloud. They both knew why Maz had come, and it seemed that both of them welcomed each other in their roles while not wanting to acknowledge the reality of it. Not just yet, anyway.

“You know,” Leia said, addressing the inevitable, “I’ve felt ready for this since I was young. Like it was always chasing me. And all those times I fought so hard to get away from it, I knew I was just going to charge right back in. Like I was daring it to try again.”

Maz laughed at that.

“Now I know why you ended up with Han.”

“We were always on the edge of something, he and I,” Leia recalled, smiling her warm, sad smile. “Always moving toward something. Or running away from another. But he was there when it counted. And he made me forget why I cared so much about so many stupid little things.”

Maz had met Han Solo when he’d been very young, before he’d ever met Leia. She’d liked him from the start, and knew he was meant for greater things than grift and smuggling. But she’d never have guessed he’d have ended up with a princess. That had surprised her.

“Oh, I loved him, Maz,” Leia said, and tears gathered in her eyes, but her memory of her husband was not grief-stricken. She was thinking of the happy times, of love and life, and of things only known to the two of them. “As much as anyone could love someone else, I loved him.”

“He was your other,” Maz replied, removing her goggles. “And the Force did not join you to have you separated so long.”

“I know. We spent so much time apart. And for the life of me, I can’t remember why. It made sense in the moment. And we both had the things we thought we needed to do. But, looking back, I just—“

Leia stopped short, and tears had begun to creep down her cheeks, but she sniffed and wiped a tear away, laughing at something from another time.

“Do you remember, Maz? That time, after the trade dispute on Ord Mandell. When Han and I came to your place on Takodana.”

“Ah, yes. You were both so young then. So brash and fiery.”

“And stupid. And both of us right. Always.”

“You were pregnant.”

“I didn’t know it yet. And Han had run into that swindler. Oh, what was his name? The Twi’lek with the piercings and the awful breath. Reeker? Recker?”

“Roa’keer, I think.”

“That’s the one. Oh, I hated when one of those ‘associates’ from his past would just pop up, and they always had the job of a lifetime lined up. Or some other nonsense.”

“In my experience,” Maz reflected, shaking her head, “there’s never a job so good that it would define a whole life. But, I’ve lived a lot longer than most, so I might have unrealistic standards.”

Leia smiled, and laughed softly, before continuing.

“Well, anyway, Han had run into Roa’keer, or whoever, and he wanted to run off to some backwater in the Outer Rim. Said it would take two days, tops. And I was so angry with him.”

“I remember. You broke one of my antique mugs.”

“If it makes it better, I was aiming for him. I didn’t mean to hit the wall.” Leia smirked at the memory, and her face brightened as the remembrance of things past took hold within her. “I thought he’d left. And I remember wanting to scream. I probably did scream. But I hadn’t even chartered a ship back to Chandrila before he came back inside. With that look he always had. When he knew he’d disappointed me. And for as much as we scrapped and argued, I could never stay mad at him.”

Leia’s smile faded, and her gaze shifted to a middle distance as the weight of things settled again on her shoulders. Maz leaned over the bedside and placed her small hand on Leia’s. Leia looked up at her, and this time grief had taken hold of her. It was a sadness so profound that Maz could almost feel its impression in the Force, a cold undertow in a warm stream, pulling down, always down, into dark waters.

“Maz, we made such a mess of things. With Ben.”

Maz looked her in the eyes and her expression became grave, but touched by serenity, and Maz felt as though when she opened her mouth, the Force was speaking through her.

“Ben has to walk his own path. I don’t know where that path will lead him. I’ve watched men of every stripe rise and fall, fail and triumph. And as I’ve seen that, I’ve seen the way the Force guides everything. I don’t think it’s done with your boy. He still has a part to play in all this.”

“I believe that,” Leia said, hope blooming again in her eyes. “I didn’t. But I believe it now.”

It was silent again for a few long seconds. Both women knew they’d been avoiding what they were meant to do.

“Have you known long?” Maz asked, and Leia shook her head slightly, but then nodded.

“When Rey came to me yesterday. I knew what it meant.“

The enormity of things struck Maz in that moment. She knew that Leia was dying, and that she would not live much longer. But she also knew that the world could change quickly, and that time remained for her to still see and do, to make a difference, and to find a deeper, more enduring peace.

“You could choose a different path,” Maz said slowly. “It is still before you. The Jedi like to talk of destiny. But destiny is only the sum of our choices.”

“It’s time,” Leia replied, her voice soft and breaking. “I want to win this fight. I want to be in a place I can call home. I want to see Ben again. I want so, so many things. But it’s time. Poe. Finn. Rose. Rey. And Ben. Even Ben. It’s their story now.”

Maz breathed out a contented sigh and smiled, nodding.

“You know,” she said, her small hand still resting on Leia’s, “stories don’t end. As long as there’s still someone to tell them. And yours, I think, will be told long after all of this around us is gone.”

Leia nodded, and her eyes glassed with tears. And when Maz spoke, she once more felt the low whisper of the Force in her ear.

“He’s still out there. Han,” Maz said, now taking Leia’s hand and holding it firmly. “When you feel the flow of time fall into you, and the Light calls, you will find him again.”

Tears flowed freely down Leia’s face, and her eyes, now filled with grateful joy, communicated a wordless thank you.

“Luke always said that the Force would guide me. If I would only look and listen,” Leia said, the tears slowing, and a serene glow settling in around her. “And I see it now. It’s always been there.”

Maz Kanata had lived over a thousand years. She had conditioned herself to accept the wondrous alongside the wretched. But what she saw next was the first thing in her long life that truly left her astonished. Leia Organa gave her a content and lasting smile, closed her eyes, and faded from view like dust swept from blades of light, her loose gown and evening coat folding onto the bed, empty.

Maz sat alone in Leia’s room a long time. She felt neither longing nor sadness. Maz had done what she was meant to do. To sit at Leia’s bedside, to hold her hand, and to be there for her as she made her choice. The Force had called Leia home. And no pain or sorrow could touch her again.

At length, Maz stood up from the chair. She took her hand away from the empty space where her friend had been. And returned to the gathering storm clouds of the real.

Chapter 24: The Rebel

Finn looked out the cockpit windshield of the Falcon, watching as the choke of burnt orange smog filtered away to reveal the surface of Taris. The landscape spread out below them, a shadowy expanse of fallen buildings and grounded or destroyed starships. Night had fallen, and Finn could see immediately that the mission was going to be far more difficult than he or anyone else had anticipated. Even though some ambient light was reflected back to the surface from the smog cloud, visibility in the ruins would be close to zero.

“What the hell was Poe thinking setting up anything down here?”

“You said it, not me,” Rey said, pitching the Falcon around to face about for the landing approach.

Chewie sounded off with a disapproving grumble, and Rey responded with, “That’s what I thought, too.”

“What?” Finn asked.

“Finn, we’ll be setting down a little closer than planned.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because the landing zone you picked out is a sinkhole. If I set down there, we won’t be leaving.”

“So, where—“

Chewie half growled something, and Finn sat down.

“I see it, Chewie. Finn, hang on to something,” Rey said quickly, then added, on the comm, “Everyone, we’re landing in about thirty seconds, and it won’t be smooth, so strap in and hold on tight.”

Finn gripped the seat as the Falcon banked sharply around what looked like a collapsed high rise, and he actually thought he might throw up as Rey knocked one lever into place while pulling hard on another and the whole ship whipsawed around, spinning down to a landing in a space of cleared rubble only slightly larger than the ship itself.

“Everyone all right back there?” Rey said into the comm. Finn’s heart was in his throat, and he realized he was close to hyperventilating. Rey, on the other hand, looked placid and relaxed, as though she’d done nothing more complicated than coast into a docking hangar.

“I’m pretty sure we’re okay. Are we okay?” Rose’s voice buzzed through the comm. “Everyone’s okay,” she reported, pausing for a second before clarifying, “Everyone that’s not throwing up is okay.”

“Remind me to tell Poe he’s full of it the next time he says he’s the best pilot in the galaxy,” Finn said between gulps of air. “What happened, anyway?”

“That collapsed structure is a bear trap. It’s a powerful magnetic field that pulls down any ship that flies over it. Poachers use them to catch fresh salvage.”

“Let me guess. This happened a lot on Jakku.”

“You’re learning,” she said, getting out of the pilot seat and patting him on the shoulder as she passed. “Now straighten up, we’ve got work to do.”

Finn took a few deep breaths. Chewie made a few noises that sounded suspiciously like laughing.

“Oh, give it a rest, all right?” Finn said, forcing himself to his feet. Whether Chewie was laughing or not, the noise continued, even as Finn started down the corridor toward the boarding ramp with a few cautious steps.

Finn walked back to the common room, where about a dozen Resistance fighters and Rose stood checking gear and checking the safeties on their weapons. Rey was already outside the ship. Since they’d had to scrap the first landing zone, he wasn’t sure where the other transports would be setting down. And then it dawned on him that the First Order was jamming communications, meaning that they weren’t going to be able to get in touch with them by typical means. He checked the strap on his rifle and headed down the ramp.

Rey was about ten feet from the ramp, surveying the terrain around them. It was dark, and the air was thick and marshy. And, Finn noted, deathly quiet.

“Hey, can you, you know, sense where the other transports are?”

Rey didn’t turn to look at him, but responded almost disinterestedly while taking a few steps away from the halo of light surrounding the Falcon.

“The refit Imperial is on the other side of that line of debris. And the SX is about five hundred meters to the west, close to the sinkhole.” She climbed up on top of a small pile of rubble. “I think the Imperial got pulled down by the trap.”

Finn walked toward her, not sure whether what he’d just heard was good news or bad.

“Can you tell if—“

Rey slid down the rubble pile and gave him a look that resided somewhere between concern and determination.

“The troops on the SX are fine. We should try to link up.”

“And the other?”

Her face softened a bit, her eyes sad as she shook her head.

“Wait. Why is there a salvage trap here? You think someone’s gonna come by, try to collect their catch?”

“Let’s not wait around to find out,” Rey said. “I’ll clear a path. Let’s get moving.”

Finn watched for a few seconds as Rey turned toward the ruined street, lifted her hand, and started moving pieces of concrete, some of which had to weigh a ton or more, with gestures to the left or right. He wasn’t sure, but he felt the sight of that would never stop being awe-inspiring.

Back inside the Falcon, the soldiers were ready to file out. Finn took a second to straighten his posture, and cleared his throat.

“Okay, listen up. Things haven’t gone exactly to plan, but we knew that was going to be the case from the start. We’re about three hundred meters closer to the depot entrance than we thought we’d be, so that’s good,” Finn swallowed hard and continued with the bad news. “What caused us to have to land so hard was a salvager’s trap, and we’re lucky Rey’s a damn good pilot. One of our transports made it down safe near our original drop zone. The other one... didn’t make it.”

Finn had expected nervous chatter or some kind of expression of grief. Instead, the soldiers remained silent, a few of them bowed their heads, but there remained a sense of stoic duty. Finn wasn’t sure whether to be heartened by the display or disenchanted.

“All right, guys. Let’s get in, get our people, and get out.”

The soldiers filed out, down the ramp. Finn headed after them.

“Wait,” Rose said, catching his sleeve.

He turned toward her, and she grabbed his jacket by the lapels.

“You come back, do you hear me?” she said, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at him.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. “We’ve been in way worse situations than this.”

“I know. I just— I have a bad feeling about this.” She let go of his lapels and straightened his jacket. “Just be careful. Don’t do anything too stupid.”

He looked at her and felt a sudden pang in his chest, and it occurred to him that she might be trying to prepare herself to lose someone yet again. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close, giving her a soft kiss. She pulled on his jacket and kissed him harder before pushing him back.

“Go on, soldier,” she said, and he could tell she wanted him to go quickly before she had a chance to think about stopping him again. He smiled at her, took one last look, and headed down the ramp.

As he descended, he heard Rose yell, “Chewie, where are the magnetic dampeners on this rust bucket?”

He laughed softly to himself and exited into the swallowing dark of the Taris night.

***

It had been a slow trek to the old rail terminal, with the company having to hold up every dozen or so meters so Rey could clear an obstruction, or so they could get their bearings in the choking darkness. There had been no sign of the First Order yet, but Finn could feel in his bones that the drop ships would break atmosphere any minute.

Everything about this felt wrong. He understood that any Resistance members in need of rescue would hunker down and wait for extraction, but there hadn’t been any sign of them at all. Finn thought it was strange that they didn’t have lookouts or scouts waiting to guide them into the base. And the fact that this installation existed at all, tucked away in maybe the least accessible place in the galaxy, filled him with apprehension. He cast glances to the men and women around him, and a nervous fear took hold in him.

In training, he’d always been told he was too sympathetic. Too willing to put himself in harm’s way to help a fellow trooper. How many times it had happened, he couldn’t remember: Phasma continually pulling him out of ranks, marching him aside, and dressing him down for “encouraging weakness.” It’s why he’d spent years on sanitation duty, despite showing greater aptitude for combat than his fellow troops. And the first time he’d found himself in a firefight, on Jakku, he’d frozen. Not out of fear for his own safety, but because he couldn’t understand the need for the slaughter.

That was the night he’d made the decision to run. But, he thought, not knowing why, he would never have been able to make that decision at all had he been caught and called out for his cowardice during the battle. He remembered standing amidst the fire and bedlam, shell shocked. And then the icy claws of terror slipping around his neck, digging under his skull, as he found himself staring at Kylo Ren. He’d thought, that night, in that moment, that that was when he would die. That Ren would freeze him in place and coldly administer the First Order’s justice with his vicious red blade. But Ren had let him go. And he’d never been able to figure out why.

“Finn,” Rey said, putting her hand on his shoulder, and pulling him away from the others, “are you all right?”

“It was the fear, huh?” he said quietly.

“It’s a hard emotion to ignore. What’s wrong?”

“This is all wrong. Where are the checkpoints? The lookouts?”

“It does seem odd.”

“Just— Rey, we need to hurry. I don’t think this is what it seems at all.”

“I think I’m beginning to agree with you,” she said, looking ahead toward the terminal entrance. “Okay. Let’s make this quick.”

Rey went ahead, waving the soldiers forward. Finn followed close behind.

The interior of the terminal was a large room with high, boarded windows. There were huge cement blocks strewn around the open floor, the remains of some aborted construction project or another. He surveyed what he could make out in the hazy darkness, and he could only see one entrance. Meaning there was one exit. He remembered Poe stressing to him before they left that the depot had an escape tunnel in case things went south. It seemed like an even more important detail to keep in mind now.

“Okay, everyone,” Finn said to the thirty or so people gathered around. “The depot’s entrance is down on the lower concourse. We have the access code, so I’ll go first, and you all file down behind me. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious as we go down there. They might have rigged the place with a trap or two to repel an assault, and we may not get the chance to tell them we’re not the bad guys.”

There were muffled assents and nods of approval. Finn gave them a sharp nod and headed down the stairs. At the bottom was a barrier with a security door. Finn found the panel to release the lock, punched the code Poe had given him, and, with an approving beep, the door lock released. Giving Rey a nervous look, he grabbed the handle and opened the door.

Finn’s eyes took a moment to adjust as the lights inside the base flickered on. Empty. No sign of life at all. He motioned over his shoulder for the others to follow as he cautiously made his way through the depot.

There were the telltale signs of Resistance gear and equipment in the main room, with mobile terminals and surveillance equipment lining the walls and occupying the table tops. Off to the right was what looked like makeshift barracks, and that’s where he headed, motioning for the others to head down the remaining corridors.

“Let’s do a quick search, people,” he said. “But be careful. Something’s wrong here.”

Rey lingered behind in the main room, and Finn guessed that she was using the Force to try to sense the people they were meant to rescue, or to anticipate a trap, or to prepare for an attack. Whatever she was doing, he was very suddenly extremely grateful to have her here. It made him feel less anxious, and the situation was quickly devolving into one that could easily collapse into panic.

The barracks looked to have been abandoned in a hurry. The occupants still had personal belongings out on the desks and cots. Whatever happened, there had been little to no warning. But the First Order hadn’t even landed yet. Why evacuate? And where to?

As he was about to head back to the main room, the door at the other end of the corridor caught his attention. It had a handwritten label indicating a hazard or danger.

“Rey,” he called down the hall, “could you get back here?”

She was there in a few seconds.

“What is it?”

“I think I found our weapons.”

“All right then.”

She stepped around him, regarding the crude warning sign with a bit of a laugh, and carefully opened the door. Following in behind her, Finn saw row upon row of munitions crates, each of them bearing unfamiliar markings. Rey stood to one side as Finn walked by. He could hear the other soldiers deeper in the base chattering. There hadn’t been any calls announcing a discovery or any sign of the men who’d been stationed here.

Finn stood over one of the crates, and he felt a distinct unease. What, he wondered again, could be so important to the Resistance to hide them in a place like this? And he was suddenly angry with himself for not being more insistent with Poe about it. For her part, Rey seemed to be distracted, a quizzical look on her face.

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s— go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

Finn knew better than to press Rey when she was feeling her way through one of her premonitions. He returned his attention to the crate, huffed a hard breath through his nose, and pried it open.

The emotions he felt came in quick succession. Shock, at what he was seeing. Anger, at Poe, for doing this, and for keeping it from the others. And the slow crawl of disillusionment and disappointment.

“‘You’ll see when you get there,’” he said to himself, repeating back Poe’s words. “Goddamn it!” he shouted, much louder than he’d intended.

Rey was looking at him, her face twisted in shock. But not because of his reaction, or the revelation of what was in the crates.

“What?” he asked.

“Leia,” Rey said, her voice dropped to a whisper.

Finn was about to say something, but they were interrupted by a thudding crack from above, and the ground shook, dust falling from the rafters.

“We have to get out of here,” Rey said. “Now.”

Finn wasn’t going to argue with that. He didn’t even bother to close the crate as they left the room, headed back toward the entrance. When they got to the main area of the base, the others had begun to gather again. Finn was going to say something, but Rey was already headed toward the door they’d entered from. Finn motioned to the others, and they followed after her.

She crossed the threshold and started up the stairs, but, just as Finn came through behind her, she stopped short and drew her lightsaber.

“Finn!” she shouted, looking back.

But she never got to warn him about anything. He instinctively flinched backward as a deafening boom filled the concourse stairwell, and the ceiling came crashing down between them.

Chapter 25: Cacophony

The shuttle ramp lowers with a hiss of steam as Kylo descends to the landing platform. From this vantage, there’s little to no visibility, and the darkness is thick and menacing. The orange of the smog clouds casts everything in a dim, burnt hue, and a following wind whips across the airdrome tower. He can see the floodlights of the other transports cutting hazy lines of bluish light into the ruins below. The stormtroopers are already filing down the ramps and staircases, their plastene armor plates clacking as they keep step as they’ve been trained.

He can sense her. She’s close. And as he reaches out to find her, he’s suddenly shaken by dull cracking sound, followed by a hollow boom. The terminal. Right down there. He doesn’t wait for the lift. He doesn’t go down the stairs. He walks without breaking stride to the edge of the platform, and drops to the surface, dulling the impact of the drop with the Force. Even so, he feels the pinch scream through his shins and the throb in his joints as he sets off at a run into the wrecked and upturned streets.

***

The world is still on its end and her ears are still ringing as Rey staggers to her feet. The air is thick with concrete dust and smoke, and she sputters a few breaths before being racked with coughs. The incandescent blaze of her saber illuminates the smoke billows and lights her way as she stumbles to the top of the concourse stairs.

She thinks a moment of Finn and the others, trapped below, but it’s a thought that is swiftly dashed from her mind as the Force shrieks its warning through her and she leaps blindly to one side. She hasn’t even seen it yet, but she knows the droid is on her, a bringing down a shock baton and swinging a vibro-blade. She swings her saber around, its electric whine trailing behind its slash of deadly light, meeting the baton, batting it aside, and she dodges backward, parrying the droid’s thrusting blade at the last possible moment.

She can sense the machine now in its entirety, and she anticipates its next attack, ducking under its arm and bringing the saber in an arcing overhand cut, severing the droid’s arm at the elbow. She spins into her follow-through and cuts across the droid’s waist with a one-handed slash, closing her empty fist and not even turning to watch as the machine’s chassis snaps under the Force like a hollow cylinder in a pressure chamber.

Before she can process what’s happening, another droid is on her and she’s falling back between the cement blocks that litter the terminal floor. Rey brings her saber back level, but suddenly senses another droid approaching from her left. She dashes to the right, hurtling a cement shard at the advancing droid, which it bats away without breaking its stride.

Just as she’s about to turn and face her twin opponents, the ground beside her blasts apart and she’s thrown sidelong into a concrete surface. Gasping for breath, she pulls herself up, using the wall for balance, and is only barely able to jump backward as a huge plume of flame bursts through the smoke and haze. She dives forward, avoiding the flames, bringing her saber around, slicing right through the droid’s knee joint, and it staggers forward, still blasting the ground with its flamethrower. In one motion, she tucks into a roll, comes to her feet, and stabs the saber through the back of the droid’s head.

But the other droid has only been half a step away, and she flings it backward with a thought. The droid fires rockets to counter the Force push and she cuts it off abruptly, causing the droid to slam forward at tremendous speed, right into Rey’s waiting blade, and the smell of melted durasteel curls through the air as the machine is bisected at the chest.

She’s only just beginning to understand that there are more droids, and they’re closing in. And her chest is heaving, and her muscles ache, and her ears are still ringing, and the air is thick with black smoke, fires now raging all around. Which is why she thinks she’s unable to anticipate the attack that comes next. Her senses have been dulled by exhaustion, confusion, smoke inhalation. It’s only sheer luck that allows her to bring her saber up to bash aside the incoming thrust.

When her saber impacts the other weapon, the unmistakable clashing of kyber plasma on kyber plasma echoes through the high-ceilinged chamber. And as she’s falling backward, and feels the presence of at least three more droids closing in, she sees the hulking figure above her. Sees, but cannot sense. Dark gray and glinting with licks of flame, her bright crimson lightsaber howling through the air as she advances through the smoke, blank eyes set in a dark mask, blazing violet.

***

Almost there, he thinks, racing through the blackness and wreckage, shoving barriers aside with the Force. He can hear blaster fire now, off in the distance, and shouts of fighting blocks and blocks to the north. But that doesn’t matter. His troops don’t matter. The war doesn’t matter. And he knows that if his own men were to stand in his way, he’d kill every last one of them without a thought.

There’s pain surging through him. Pain and panic. And it’s not his. He vaults over a twisted pile of concrete and rebar, his heart bashing against his ribs as he ignites his lightsaber and sprints even faster, the crackle of his blade trailing embers behind him as he rushes into the dark.

***

It’s like fighting a ghost. Or the wind. But that’s not something she can focus on, because she’s busy staying alive.

The hunter is relentless, and each smash of her saber as Rey strains to fend off the assault feels bone-shattering. All the while, retreating back and back, she’s flailing around with the Force, wildly lashing out to keep the battle droids at bay. The hunter is enormous, and she moves so quickly and with such skill that Rey is barely able to bring her blade around for each strike. And she’s beginning to realize just how much she’s relied on the Force to help her overcome her opponents, even before she awoke to her powers. Now it’s as though she’s blind, and it’s a bizarre and terrifying experience, being able to see this nightmare apparition right in front of her while sensing nothing of her in the Living Force.

Rey can sense the outer wall of the terminal is coming up behind her. She maneuvers toward it, hoping to keep the droids away from her flank, and the hunter slices downward to block her retreat. Rey ducks under the blow, the red plasma singing her wrappings as they flow behind her, and she rolls to an unbalanced crouch inches away from a column of fire. She whips around, unused to being unaware of her enemy’s position, and sees the hunter bearing down on her. She feints with her saber, dips to the side, and thrusts her hand out, pushing the hunter into the air.

The hunter’s armor fires thrusters to keep her aloft, and three small devices eject from her arm guards, impacting the ground. And all at once, the world goes numb as the thudding percussion of sonic blasts batter her in place, and she has only time enough for her vision to clear as the hunter’s spiked boot smashes into her chest, knocking her on her back.

There’s no purchase to be found for breath. And she’s dropped her lightsaber. And she can’t sense the droids anymore, but it hardly matters. Because the violet eyes of the hunter are above her and closing in, the droning hum of her blade cutting down, suffocating other sounds with promises of the void. And Rey is reaching for her saber, calling to it, knowing it’s too late, as a blur of black and red streaks across her vision and the hunter is sent sprawling out of sight.

***

The droids had proven short work, but he’s never seen anything like this creature before. As he enters the terminal, he sees, through the pitch of smoke and steam, a towering armored woman, masked and cowled, bearing a lightsaber. And she’s about to kill Rey.

He summons what breath he has left in his aching lungs and flings himself at the hunter, crashing into her side, and bringing his blade in where the armor segments. But rather than feel the familiar sink of plasma into flesh, a strange vibration blasts out from the armor, and, as he and the hunter are sent tumbling into the fiery ruin, his saber shorts out and the blade retracts.

He scrambles to his feet, staggering to the side as he strains to find breath. He clicks his saber’s ignition switch. Nothing. He swings around, looking for the hunter. She’s nowhere to be seen. And he can’t sense her movements. He can’t sense anything of her at all. He can sense Rey, somewhere on the other side of the fire, and he turns his attention that way.

And the hunter is on him, her saber cutting a ghastly wail through the air, burning the color of fire and blood. He tries to dodge, but he’s at the limits of exhaustion, and the saber catches him, glancing off the back of his hand as he leaps to safety. Tumbling over, he throws off his smoking glove and presses the ignition switch on his saber again. Nothing. Knowing there are only seconds to spare, he screams his command through the Force to the crystal in his lightsaber, and, in a burst of fear and pain, the blade erupts from the emitter, quillions blasting out to form the cross guard.

Kylo lurches to his feet, only to be met by the ground blowing apart beneath him, and he staggers back, and hears the sharp hiss of thrusters as an armored fist smashes him across the face. He knows the lightsaber is coming. But not the direction. As he brings his saber up to meet it, he realizes, too late, that he’s guessed wrong, and the thrust coming toward his neck is going to strike. But before it can happen, he feels a tremor speeding through the Force and he leans back just enough so that when the cement slab slams into the hunter’s side, he avoids being hit by less than an inch.

Rey is standing there, her silhouette backed by a tower of flame, the blue of her lightsaber casting a ghostly aura around her in the dust and smoke.

***

She’s not sure how she isn’t dead. As she struggles to stand, she casts about for some understanding.

Ben.

He’s somewhere on the other side of the flames, and he’s exhausted and confused. Rey calls her lightsaber to her and ignites the blade, setting off around the perimeter of the fire to find a way around. The smoke is burning her lungs. She’s bruised and bleeding and her head is pounding. But she’s got to find him before the hunter gets to him.

The fires are raging through the terminal, and the heat is weighing on her as she breaks into a run. She can sense him. She only needs to—

She feels a sudden spike of panic in the Force and, almost instinctively, hurls a huge cement slab through the flames, the mass of it clearing a path that she follows behind. She hears the smack of concrete on metal, and a howl of pain as the hunter’s massive form is thrown against the outer wall of the terminal. Ben is standing in almost the exact place she’d just flung the stone, and he turns his head, meeting her eyes. He’s like a shadow cut away from the firelight, and his saber ripples and sparks, casting his face in a mesmerizing blend of surging reds.

They stand across from each other a moment before the hunter rejoins them in the circle of stone and flame. Her armor is dented and sparking. Her mask is cracked. The red-violet cloth of her tunic is singed and smoking at the elbows. Rey reaches out to Ben through their bond and her heart slows, and she feels his beating in time to match it, and a calm settles in her mind as she brings her saber back to a fighting stance. She hears Ben’s saber cut its sparking hum as he twirls it once and brings it up in front of him, blade straight out and aimed at their enemy.

The hunter regards them warily. She takes her saber and secures it to her hip before crossing her arms, hands on her belt. In one fluid movement, she slashes outward with both arms, igniting a red saber with each. Rey’s never seen a fighter like this before. And as the hunter drops into a two weapon stance, she can feel a keening in the Force, and she knows exactly how Ben is going to move and when he’s going to do it. And more than that, she can influence that movement, just as she can feel his subtle influences on her. Just as it seems the circling dance the hunter has engaged with them will explode again into a flurry of combat, the hunter rushes toward them, but not at them, Rey realizes.

And that’s when she sees the thermal detonators flying out from the hunter’s armor as the hunter leaps into the air, sheathing the sabers. Her thrusters activate, and, smashing through the boarded windows, she disappears into the night. The blinking detonators hit the ground, and, as though they are of one mind and body, she and Ben both use the Force to throw the lethal bombs into the air, and they explode in a shower of shrapnel and fire above them.

Rey sheathes her saber and clips it to her belt and she turns to see Ben has done the same. She meets his eyes and there are a thousand things she wants to say. But as he opens his mouth to speak, she closes the distance between them and pulls him down into a kiss so driven and fierce she swears she’s going to eat him alive.

Chapter 26: The Rebel

“Rey!”

Finn shouted through the rubble, but the only reply was the dull echo of his own voice bouncing back at him. He staggered back from the dust cloud that kicked up when the ceiling collapsed and backed through the depot’s main door. The lights inside were blinking and flickering wildly, and the chaos from the concourse above sounded like a squadron of TIE bombers dropping test charges before entering a combat zone.

Focus, he told himself. Rey can handle herself. She doesn’t need saving. But these people are depending on you.

“All right, people, listen up,” Finn said, raising his voice until it carried through the room. “We’re aborting mission. Now. There’s an escape tunnel on the lower level, in the back. Let’s find it.”

“What about the weapons?” asked a young corporal.

“Yeah, about those,” Finn said, his expression hardening. “Do we have any remote detonators?”

Some hands went up around the room. Finn went around, collecting the cylindrical grenades until he had about twenty.

“I want five of you to break off from the main group and scout the escape tunnel. Another five, with me. The rest of you, set up chokepoints in case we get boxed in.”

No one questioned. Finn set off down the hall to the weapons storage room, attended by five soldiers.

“Two detonators to a stack. Make sure they’re secured under the lids of the top crates and on the exterior of the bottom ones. And let’s make this quick.”

If any of the soldiers recognized the disruptor rifles, they didn’t say so. Finn hoped they didn’t know what they were. They were efficient and dutiful, and Finn couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride. He hadn’t even explained why he wanted to destroy the rifles. And these men and women had clearly heard Poe attest to their importance to the Resistance back at the Vedic base.

Trust, Finn thought. It can’t be bought or bartered or bribed. It can’t be instructed. And it’s worth more than any crate of outlaw rifles.

He could still hear the blasting and thudding from above, and he wondered if Rey had gotten out. He shook his head and brought himself back to the moment. He ushered everyone out of the room as soon as the charges were set, and closed and latched the door. He headed back to the main room and motioned everyone away from the hall leading to the weapons cache. He ducked around the door jamb and leaned flat against the wall. He pulled out the detonator ignition remote, flicked off the safety, and pressed the switch.

The door to the cache blew clean off its hinges, and hurtled down the corridor and out into the main room, impacting the far wall, leaving behind a web of cracked concrete. Peering through the smoke, Finn could see half of the barracks and the entire room that had housed the cache had been disintegrated. Acrid smoke curled out from the spherical blast zone, and there was an electric snap in the air.

Finn tossed the ignition aside, unslung his rifle, and set off toward the back of the base.

“We’re done here,” he said. And his soldiers followed him.

***

The escape tunnel was a curving, wildly inconsistent, and poorly built corridor, barely held up by shoddy carpentry. Finn and the Resistance soldiers had to squeeze through single file for most of its length. Finn took the lead, and they made good time for having been detoured with the disruptors.

Finn wasn’t sorry. Not in the slightest. He’d seen disintegrations before, as part of psychological training during programming. He’d seen the grisly results, and they’d stayed with him. He couldn’t ignore his disappointment with Poe. He knew the rifles could take down TIE fighters and First Order transports with a single blast, but the thought of Resistance fighters blasting stormtroopers with ion bursts made his stomach sink. The burnt metallic crackle. Young men and women struggling with their plastene chest plates. The dawning horror taking hold over the course of long minutes that they’d died the moment they’d been hit, and had only the smoking rot of flesh melting away to guide them to death.

He was going to have a long talk with his friend when they got back to Vedic III. Or a short one with raised voices.

Finn opened the hatch at the far end of the escape tunnel and climbed out into what looked like an old correctional exercise yard. Or maybe it was what passed for a child’s playground centuries ago on this planet. Regardless, there was some light here, shining dimly from some rigged up, dusty street lamps.

“Finn,” one of the soldiers said, pointing.

He looked in the direction she’d indicated. There, on the pavement, were roughly twenty bodies, all lined up, covered in standard issue blankets. As he got closer, he saw they’d all been beheaded, and their heads were placed on top of the blankets in what struck Finn as some kind of ritualistic fashion. Shining a light on the wounds, he could see they’d all been cauterized by the cut.

“Execution troopers?” another of the young soldiers asked.

“No,” Finn said, staring ahead. “The monomolecular axes leave a jagged cut. And the skin burns and peels away from the wound. This is clean. Really clean.”

“What then?” another soldier asked.

Finn knew. A lightsaber. Was Ren here? Why would he take the time to ritualistically execute twenty low ranking Resistance fighters? And why leave the disruptor rifles behind?

“Let’s get moving,” Finn said, standing up. “There’s nothing more we can do for them. Let’s make sure they didn’t die for no reason.”

Finn said the words, but they stuck in his throat. They had died for no reason. And so had the fifteen soldiers on the transport that got pulled down by the bear trap. He waved to the company, and started back toward the ships.

They’d made it about ten meters before the ground split apart and a rain of asphalt and concrete sprayed over and on top of them. Finn dove to find cover, scrambling behind the wreckage of an ancient land speeder. And not a moment too soon, because the battery of blaster rifles just above them, atop the ridge, opened fire, showering them in streaks of red and smoking debris.

Finn thought about possible options. A firefight was out of the question. He had maybe thirty soldiers. There were that many stormtroopers just on their right flank. And Finn knew what they were doing. The flanks were gradually taking position at wider and wider angles, while vanguard advanced, forcing a retreat into a pincer attack. In this kind of terrain, the bombed out corpse of a city in a hazy, smoky, near pitch black night, it would be easy to get surrounded. He had to think fast.

Phasma’s voice in his head. FN-2187. Still looking out for the runts, I see. Pathetic. Never efficient enough. Never ruthless enough. You’ve got no stomach for a soldier’s life. You’re a number. You’re replaceable. Remember that. Caring too much. Wanting to help. Being “weak,” “foolish.” Report to sanitation detail. Maybe a few months swabbing toilets will do you some good. Though I doubt it very much.

And Rose. What she’d said before. Don’t do anything too stupid.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he whispered to himself.

He signaled to the soldiers huddled behind the debris near the edge of the clearing. A simple gesture that meant something along the lines of On my mark, run like hell. Or at least he hoped that was the message they got.

Now or never. He took in a sharp breath and stood up from behind the speeder, walking out into the clearing.

“Miss me, guys?” he shouted up into the dark. “Come on! It’s me! FN-2187! I’m right here!” He threw his arms wide, staring up at the stormtroopers, defiant and wild-eyed.

But no fire came. He hoped the others were running for their lives. He could see the spectral white forms seemingly hovering all around him, staring down from the debris piles. His chest swelled with a racing fear, and with courage held aloft by a streak of madness.

“What? Nobody’s got any backbone since I spaced Phasma? Huh? Come on! I’M RIGHT HERE!” He shouted even louder, beating his chest plate with each of the last three words.

“Is this how the First Order deals with treason? Shoot me!” And now he was truly skirting lunacy. Because his men had almost certainly gotten clear by this point. But his blood was hot, and he was thinking about those damned rifles he’d just sent back to Hell, and he was looking up at all these men who were just like he was. And something in him broke free of the chains that held him down. “Shoot me like you shot all the others! Like you shot our brothers and friends who wanted a better life than to be a number! Shoot me down like the betraying coward I am!”

Finn didn’t know what was happening. There were maybe a hundred stormtroopers with clear sight lines on him. And not a single one had taken a shot. He looked around at them. He knew them, even if he’d never met them. And they knew him.

“Or maybe you want a better life than to be a number too,” he said, his voice still loud and carrying. “Maybe you want something more. I’m not a bug in the system. The system is broken. The system was never right.”

He stepped forward, dropping his arms, staring up.

“And my name is Finn. What’s yours?”

The silence finally broke as an officer shouldered his way to the front.

“What’s going on here? Open fire!”

And that’s what happened. But not at Finn. A low ranking stormtrooper on a lower elevation took aim and shot the officer, and he tumbled down to the pavement below.

And then all Hell broke loose.

Stormtroopers began opening fire on each other, and the Taris night lit up with blaster bolts and blasts of fire, red and orange and black. Finn stood for a moment wondering how he was still alive, but broke out of that daze when a blaster bolt came inches from his face. He flinched, and within seconds, he was sprinting off in the direction of the ships.

Behind him, the horizon was starting to bleed with color, and a new day was almost upon them. All of them.

***

Finn came stumbling down a debris slide, and rounded a corner he thought would lead to the Falcon. As he almost careened into a menacing thicket of rebar, he recognized where he was. The entrance to the terminal. Rey. Maybe she’d already headed back to the ship. But that didn’t seem like her. Rey wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Checking his rifle, he turned around and plunged into the dark building.

Right away when he got inside, he could see that something crazy had happened. There was fire everywhere, and the cement blocks that were strewn about the open area around the concourse stairwell were battered and chewed up. There were impact craters in the floor, and some of the boarded windows had been smashed out.

Over the crackle of the flames, he could hear the low din of voices, and he followed the sound. He came around a large cement block, right by the eastern exit doors, and saw the source. There was Rey.

And not five feet from her was Kylo Ren.

Chapter 27: Eleison

It’s different when she’s actually there. When there’s no swirl or crackle of energy crashing in and around them, no ebb and flow of cosmic will tugging on them, when it’s just the balance of energies in the Living Force binding and coursing between their bodies, it somehow feels more right than ever. And as she kisses him, the bloodlust of battle still fresh and pounding through their veins, the collision of their presences in the Force becomes a joining, with both of them finding and filling the emptiness in the other.

This is where he’s meant to be. And he responds to her, kissing her back, until there is a gentle subsiding, and their lips are now softly touching, and parting, and touching again, and all that passes between them are hushes of shared breath.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the hunter escaped them. He doesn’t know how long the cracking of explosions and the peal of blaster fire have been echoing in the darkness beyond the outer wall of the terminal. When reality comes back, it does so gradually, and he’s left staring into her dark eyes, chestnut brown, reflected with pulses of firelight.

“Hi,” he hears himself say.

“Hi,” she responds, and slows her breathing, her hands still clasped around his neck. “I’m sure I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life.”

“I know the feeling,” he says, bringing his ungloved hand to her cheek, and brushing it with his fingers. She leans her face against his hand for a few stolen seconds before a thought seizes her, and she comes back to the reality of the moment.

“What was she?”

“I don’t know,” he says as they step apart from their embrace. The fires are still burning all around them, and the inside of the terminal looks like it’s been shelled by mortar fire. “I’ve never seen anything like her.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Could you sense her?”

“No.”

“It’s like she wasn’t even there.”

“Was it like that with—“

“Luke. Yes. But—“

“What?”

“It’s strange,” she says, glancing to the spot where the hunter had been standing before she leapt through the window. “With Luke, it seemed— he was trying very hard not to feel the Force. It was a constant strain. And with this... hunter...”

Kylo thinks of the hunter’s movements. Her cold efficiency. The brutality of her methods. No quarter expected and none given. She had not struck him as one to waste energy or time on tricks.

“It didn’t seem like she was exerting any effort like that at all.”

“Ben, I don’t like this. It doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s Hux,” he says, gnashing his teeth. “All of this.”

“You think he put a bounty out on me?”

“Not just you,” he says, meeting her eyes.

Rey pauses, and the realization is clear on her face as her eyes widen.

“This was a trap. And I was the bait.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. She steps into him again, her hands on his chest.

“Come with me,” she says, looking up at him.

“Rey—“

“I know. I know.”

“There are three hundred stormtroopers out there. And they’re coming.”

She turns her head toward the exit doors. The thudding and smashing, the blasts and cracks outside the terminal have intensified, and the building is shaking under the strain.

“That sounds like a lot of firing if they’re just engaging us.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning his attention toward the exits, recognizing she’s right. “It does.”

“What’s happening?”

“If there’s been a mutiny—“

“You think they’re firing on each other?”

He tries to sense it. The Force is thick with anger. And panic. And betrayal.

“Rey,” he says, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes pleading and serious, “listen to me. If high command thinks there’s been a rebellion in the ranks—“

“They’ll just blast us all from orbit,” she says, knowing his thoughts.

He nods, and adds, “Or they’ll land a thousand troops to put it down.”

“Can’t you just—“

“Go.” His voice is calm and even, but he knows she can feel the conflict in him. Only now the conflict isn’t between Light and Dark, or between resolve and confusion, but between what he wants and what he thinks is right. “I’ll try to pull the division out. And if they won’t—“

He unclips his lightsaber.

“Ben, no,” she leans closer, closing her fingers around the fabric of his tunic. “We stay together.”

He knows she’s probably right. He knows he wants to stay with her more than anything he’s ever wanted. But he also knows that even if he can’t stop the advance of the troops, he can slow it. Just as he knows that Hux is somewhere above them, and that the hunter is just the beginning. The general will never rest until he’s ended them both. Kylo knows he has to stop him while there’s still chaos and confusion. While he’s still Supreme Leader, whatever that even means now.

“Go. Please.”

She gives him a searching look, and he feels her yield to understanding. And while he can sense she doesn’t completely agree, and that she doesn’t want to be parted, she knows it’s something he feels he has to do. She nods, and rises on her toes to give him one more kiss before she backs away from him.

That’s when he realizes they’re not alone. The stormtrooper. FN-2187. Finn.

The former trooper looks at them with a measure of alarm and disbelief, and Kylo has to remind himself that he made Rey a promise. Not to harm her friends. Then he realizes he’s got his lightsaber in his hand. Before any words can be exchanged, the soldier has pulled his rifle to firing position.

And nothing happens. Because the man who calls himself Finn is frozen in place. Kylo looks at Rey, who has her hand raised toward Finn, and she’s looking back at Kylo, a pained expression on her face, her eyes glazed with a sheen of tears. He gives her one last look, backs away, and disappears out the exit doors.

***

Rey walks back to the Falcon at a brisk pace, doing her best to ignore Finn as he shouts after her. Tears sting in her eyes. The sky is ablaze with gauzy reflections of red and orange, and the roar of First Order transports can be heard in the distance, landing somewhere on the other side of the terminal.

She’s angry. She’s frustrated. More than that, she’s hurt and exhausted, and having been reunited with Ben only to have to leave him yet again claws at her chest. And the empty places in her ache all the more for having been made whole.

Rey climbs the boarding ramp and enters the ship with a stiff, determined stride. She can see that none of the soldiers that arrived with them have returned, and Rose jumps up from where she’d been sitting in the common room as soon as she sees Rey cross to the instrument panels by the corridor to the cockpit.

Finn, who’d been just behind, storms in after her.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?”

Rey ignores him, her lips tightening into a line, as she checks the flight systems.

“Rey—“

“Not now, Finn.”

“No!” he shouts, slamming his rifle down in the table. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“We need to cycle the main processors. Rose, did you get the magnetic dampeners online?”

“Yeah,” Rose says, casting glances at Finn and Rey in confusion, “all I had to do was... refresh... the EM cycle— what’s going on?”

“Why don’t you ask Rey?” Finn says, motioning toward her.

Rey turns from the panel, and, closing her eyes, lets out a hard breath through her nose.

“Finn,” she starts. But Finn isn’t waiting.

“Go on,” he says, anger bubbling up in him. “Tell us why you were with Kylo Ren. Why you stopped me from shooting him. Why you let him go.”

“What?” Rose says, her voice barely a whisper.

“We got separated,” Finn says, turning to Rose. “I went back to make sure she was all right. And she was there with him.” Then, turning back to Rey, he continues, “And you let him go. And he let us go. What the hell is going on here?”

Long seconds pass. Rey opens her eyes. And even though she’s frustrated, there’s a soft sadness to them, and she wants to make everything right, even as she knows she can’t. Rey can sense that Finn is angry and confused. But from Rose she senses something else altogether: shock, realization. And Rey knows what she’s going to say before she says it.

“He’s in love with her,” Rose says, her face a picture of amazed disbelief. “And she’s in love with him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Finn chides, laughing.

Rey can’t say anything. She doesn’t know how. The way Rose is looking at her is like a shard of glass in her heart, and Finn’s laughter is dying away as Rey’s silence persists.

“Come on,” he says, his brow knitting into tight furrows, “that’s ridiculous, right?”

“You love him?” Rose’s voice peaks at the end, and Rey senses in her a tortured blend of disgust and empathy, even as her face continues to communicate pure shock.

“It’s— it’s really not that simple,” Rey says, with much less conviction than she’d hoped.

“Yeah,” Finn responds, “it really is. Is it true?”

“I—” Rey searches for anything to tell them. Her mind is blank. She’s thinking of Leia, who she felt pass into the Force while they were in the bunker. She’s thinking of Ben, and trying to let the feeling of him calm her.

“I can’t believe this,” Rose says, sinking into a chair.

“Rey,” Finn says, stressing each word. “Whatever or whoever he was— whoever he says he is now— Kylo Ren is a murderer.”

“I know what he’s done, thank you,” Rey spits out, then composes herself. “So does he. And his name is Ben.”

Rose has been looking down at her feet. When she does look up, her eyes are fringed with tears, and Rey wants so badly to comfort her, because she can sense her friend’s pain.

“Why?” Rose manages. “How?”

“I— I couldn’t possibly know where to begin.”

“We deserve to know what this is. How this happened,” Finn says, crossing his arms over his chest. “All of us do.”

Rey’s patience gives out, and she walks toward Finn, indignant and unbowed.

“And what exactly do you think it is you deserve to know? That I’ve been fraternizing with the enemy? That I’ve been betraying all of you every single day? That I’m a spy? Is that it, Finn?”

She stops a pace from him. She can’t read his expression, and his feelings are a trample of confused sympathies. Anger mixed with understanding. Fear mixed with compassion. Love and hate boiled into an indistinguishable mash.

“Or maybe you want to know that the Force connected us,” she continues, softer. “And that it showed me that underneath the mask, there’s still Light in him. Maybe you want to know that I went to him on the Supremacy because I saw what he could be. Not just what he was made into by Snoke. You of all people should understand that.”

And when she senses Finn’s feelings shifting back toward the dark and the cold, she takes another half step toward him, and her features harden, and she reflects his anger back at him with all the resolve she can muster.

“And maybe you want to know that he killed Snoke to save my life. That he offered me a place at his side, and I refused him. Because I wouldn’t abandon you or the others. That just now, he almost died saving me. Again. Right now he’s out there trying to keep whatever is happening with the stormtroopers from getting to us. So we can escape. So if we’re done here, I have a ship to fly.”

She doesn’t wait to find out if Finn has a response. She stalks down the corridor to the cockpit, where Chewie is already in the co-pilot’s chair. The sun is up, and the burnt browns and oranges of Taris blow in humid streaks across the blasted landscape, the clouds blackened with smoke from the battle.

Rey sits down in the pilot’s seat and starts the takeoff sequence. She pauses when she notices the hot tears falling down her cheeks. Chewie puts his paw on her back and offers her a comforting sound she understands to mean, “They’ll understand in time.”

She favors him with as much of a smile as she can manage, and wipes her eyes as she flips the last few switches. It’s when she eases the throttle forward that she feels it, blasting pain through the bond like an electric burn.

Rey—

“Ben,” she gasps.

***

Chaos. Fire and screaming. Battle cries. The whine of TIE fighters strafing low across the sky. The roar of drop ships. War.

Kylo always felt he was made for this. But now, as he makes his way back to the airdrome tower, he can’t feel anything but fury at the waste of it all. Stormtroopers killing stormtroopers. Now that Hux has decentralized the corps, it would be so simple to spark this kind of insurrection across the entire Order. With the chain of command severed, Hux thinks he can exert control, Kylo muses as he climbs the rubble of a dead city. The scene before him should disabuse any notion of that.

He looks up at the landing platform where his command shuttle is docked. He had been in such a rush once they’d landed, he hadn’t brought anything at all with him. He’d have to get to the comm if he wanted any chance of recalling the division and aborting the countermeasures high command was already employing. He can see more drop ships arriving, and another shuttle docking at his platform.

Hux. Come down to mingle with the common folk. Or, more likely, Kylo thinks, to finish the job his hunter failed to do. Readying his saber, he heads off toward the lift.

It’s a smooth trip up the twenty or so stories to the platform. Amazing, considering the age of the equipment. When the lift shudders to a stop, and the doors slide open, he sees what he was expecting. General Hux. But, strangely, he’s alone. No guards. No soldiers.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says with a cold smile, “I understand there’s something of a situation below.”

“Who is she, Hux?” Kylo says, striding forward. “The hunter.”

“Had a bit of a scrap with some locals, Ren? I can’t be the source of all your troubles.”

Kylo ignites his lightsaber and grits his teeth. A glacial wave of terror washes over him. Hux’s fear is sharper than he’s ever felt it. Good. Let it consume him. Let it break him.

“Tell me who she is and where I can find her and I’ll let you live,” Kylo seethes, advancing on the general.

“Always the man of honor, is that it?” Hux projects the stoic demeanor of a man with dignity, but this fear, there’s something about it that isn’t right.

“No,” Kylo stops a pace away from Hux. The wind picks up, sweeping across the platform, kicking up swirls of dust. “Right now I’m working on mercy.”

“Mercy, is it?”

Kylo is about to dispense with clemency when he begins to understand that Hux’s fear is masking a thought. And the thought is a mere shape of a thing, barely formed, frozen over and cracking under the strain of having been concealed. But before Kylo can break that thought loose from its bindings, the world goes white, and his ears are split by a ringing that pierces through him like an iron spike. He staggers, and his vision starts to clear, and his hearing is warbling back from where it had collapsed into a static hiss.

It’s a few seconds before he realizes there’s a knife between his ribs.

“This is my mercy.”

Hux shoves the blade deeper and starts twisting, his face screwed into a vicious scowl. Kylo’s hand shoots up and grips Hux’s throat, and he bends the Force to crush this small man, but he’s losing focus. And his saber has shut off. He only has the presence of mind to shove Hux off of him with the Force. The general is flung back onto the command shuttle boarding ramp, unmoving.

Kylo, clipping his saber back to his belt, tries to steady himself, but stumbles, keels as the blood comes streaming out of his chest, and falls off the side of the platform. Whether it’s the Force or some other caprice, Kylo doesn’t know, but his fall is arrested by the support beams below, and he’s able to keep his balance on one, landing with a clanking thud.

He rolls onto his back and he knows he’s dying. His tunic is wet with blood and his breathing is becoming ragged and shallow. His vision starts to smoke away into a wash of blacks and reds. And he calls out, reaching for the last thing, the only thing, that matters.

“Rey—“

Chapter 28: The Rebel

Rey stormed off toward the cockpit, and Finn thought about following after. But the look she’d given him as she walked away was enough to convince him otherwise.

His head was still foggy and he felt as though he’d just fallen into some kind of gravity chamber, up being down, everything sideways and twisted and tilting. Rey. In love. With Kylo Ren. And him in love with her. It was madness. It made no sense. And as he continued to think about it, the only thing that bothered him more than the absurdity of it all was that he was starting to see all the ways that it actually did make sense.

They were young, and the only people in the galaxy that Finn knew of who were so drastically strong with the Force. They’d been pushed together by war and conflict, and they’d been alone with each other more than Finn had cared to recognize before. And if what Rey said was true, then they’d been in each other’s heads in a far more considerable way than anyone had guessed.

His mind was racing. He remembered the forest on Starkiller now. Rey calling Kylo a monster. Him taunting her. Her trying to shoot him. Him flinging her against the tree, knocking her out. Then he’d fought Kylo, and lost. And even though he’d heard the story of Rey fighting him, beating him, leaving him scarred and humiliated, he’d never actually heard the story from Rey. Poe had told him. And the legend had spread among the Resistance fighters. It was memorialized in recruiting propaganda, along with Kylo’s famous duel with Luke on Crait. Thinking on that, Finn now recognized that no one in the Resistance had actually watched that happen either.

How much of what he accepted as true was just assumption? Or comforting fictions? How much had he taken for granted, never thinking to question? And then Rose’s words to him rang through his mind: Have you ever considered you might not know Rey all that well?

He leaned against the curved wall of the Falcon common room and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Rose was still sitting in the chair by the table.

“What happened to the others?” Rose said quietly, looking up at him.

“What, they never came back?”

“We didn’t hear anything at all until you two came aboard just now.”

Finn hadn’t even thought about them since he’d found Rey with Kylo in the terminal. He knew they’d gotten clear of danger when he’d stepped out into the yard below the debris line back by the escape tunnel exit. It hadn’t occurred to him that they wouldn’t have immediately gone back to the Falcon.

“Maybe they got to the other transport,” he said, and ran his hand back through his hair, sighing.

The sounds of battle boomed and carried from a distance. Finn could hear the muffled screech of TIE fighters somewhere above them.

“Wait,” Rose said, coming clear of the haze of shock she’d been in the last few minutes, “what Rey said. Who are the stormtroopers fighting?”

Finn gave her a nervous smile.

“I may have caused a bit of a revolution.”

“How did you manage that?”

“If I tell you, do you promise not to be mad?”

“No,” she said immediately.

“That’s— well, I don’t know what to do now,  because people usually just promise.”

Rose stood up and crossed to within a step of him. Her expression was inscrutable, her lips pursed, her eyes wide, her eyebrows arched as high as they could be.

“Okay, please don’t be mad.”

Just then, they felt the Falcon lift off. But instead of a smooth climb into orbit, Finn could feel the ship bank sharply, and he and Rose were almost thrown to the floor. They exchanged an alarmed glance, and Finn scrambled for balance, running toward the cockpit.

Through the cockpit windshield, Finn could see they weren’t heading toward the clouds. Rey was bringing the ship around, and the airdrome tower came sliding into view, a spike with tiered landing platforms jutting against the brightening horizon.

“Chewie, angle the deflectors,” Rey said. There was an urgency to her voice that filled Finn with sudden fear. “Those TIE fighters are going to pick up on us any second.”

“What are we doing?” he asked. Rey didn’t respond. Chewie let out what sounded to Finn like a strangled howl.

“I see it, I see it,” Rey said, and the horizon dipped away as she dove for a second or two before whipping back level. Finn’s stomach lurched as he grabbed a seat back for balance.

He could see the chaos out the window. Groups of TIE fighters hurtled in clusters over the ruins, pelting targets below with bursts of bright green plasma. Blaster fire was everywhere. Farther back, Finn could see First Order drop ships deploying. And the fighting had spread back to their landing zones. Whatever he’d started down there, it had spread. And fast.

“Rey, this is crazy,” Finn said, leaning over the console. “You’re cutting back across a kill zone for strafing runs. If we don’t— “

Chewie roared at him and he stumbled back.

“All right! All right! I got it!” he shouted, throwing his hands up.

“There!” Rey yelled, pointing ahead.

They were coming up on the airdrome tower. Rey was pointing toward the highest platform. Finn peered through the glass as Rey slowed the approach, coming up under some support beams. Someone was up there, barely holding on.

“Oh, don’t tell me—“

“Finn, go open the top hatch,” Rey said hurriedly. She turned to him, her eyes pleading. “Please.”

He paused, but for less than a second. He turned and ran back down the corridor and through the common room. Rose jumped to her feet and followed, but he couldn’t hear anything she was saying because he knew they didn’t have much time. He stopped next to the escape pods and punched the lift to the airlock, grabbing the securing line and clipping the caribiner to his belt as the first and second hatch doors telescoped open.

Rey had brought the Falcon to a hover right underneath the support beam. The wind was fierce at this altitude, and Finn braced himself the best he could as he stood to full height. Kylo’s gloved hand dangled over the edge. He wasn’t moving.

Finn reached up to grab him, but the glove was slicked with something and he only managed to pull the glove off as he stumbled forward. Tossing the glove aside, he jumped straight up, grabbing Kylo around the forearm and yanking him down off the beam. The larger man tumbled down onto him in a heap, and Finn gathered him up as best he could, pulling him into the airlock, closing the hatch behind them as the lift eased back into the ship’s interior.

“All right! I got him!” Finn yelled into the comm as the hatch sealed. He immediately felt the ship surge forward. He unclipped the caribiner from his belt and slung Kylo’s arm over his shoulder, pulling him along, back to the common room.

Rose stood motionless as she watched Finn dragging the black clad figure into the room. The look of shock on her face quickly drained away as she motioned for Finn to look down at himself.

His hands, jacket, and trousers were streaked with bright red blood.

Rose wasn’t frozen in place anymore. And the shock had been replaced with purpose and resolve. She rushed to clear off a cot and brushed everything aside, onto the floor, with a single sweep of her arms.

“Lay him down over here. Get something to prop him up with. There’s a med kit in the drawer there,” she shouted, stepping aside as Finn heaved Kylo onto the makeshift bed. “Where’s the wound?”

Finn was panting, hands on his knees. Kylo was a huge man, and he was completely unconscious, making him incredibly difficult to move. Finn looked at him, assessing.

“Chest. Stab wound. Judging by the smell, monomolecular knife.”

“He’s going to need a bacta injection,” Rose said with a controlled urgency that Finn couldn’t help but find inspiring. “Where am I going to find a needle that long?”

She grabbed Finn’s hand off of his knee, and pulled him forward, slapping it down on Kylo’s tunic with a wet smack.

“Keep pressure on it,” she said, turning her attention to Kylo. “We’ve got to get this thing off him,” she continued, rushing across the room to the workstation, rummaging through the tools.

Finn looked at the tunic. He could tell it was buttoned somehow up the middle, but he had no concept of how to undo the fasteners.

The ship keeled to one side, and Finn had to brace both himself and Kylo to keep the two of them from flying to the floor. Everything came level again, and he could hear Rose scrambling through a spill of tools behind him.

“How the hell does this thing even go on?” Finn shouted, returning his attention to the tunic.

“Cut it if you have to,” Rose shouted, tossing him a pair of wire shears.

Finn took his hand off of the wound, grabbed Kylo’s tunic by its hem, and slid the shears around the fabric. In two quick cuts, he’d opened it to the neck, and he pulled the cloth away from the wound and down the man’s shoulders. The tunic was soaked. And Finn could see the stab wound, narrow and deep, with burn marks scorching the skin at one end. Blood was coming out in a steady seep, gushing slightly with each heartbeat.

“Rose,” Finn yelled, his voice shot through with panic, “he’s bleeding out here!”

Rose was still throwing tools and components around, grabbing out anything that looked like a syringe needle.

“Open the drawer!” Rose yelled, not looking his way. Finn complied, and was met with an assortment of bandages, wraps, and an autoject tool with a cartridge slot. “Grab one of those hemoplast emulsions and inject him with it.”

“Which one is that?”

“The green one. Hurry!”

Finn snatched up a green cartridge and loaded it. He pulled the safety lock and exposed the syringe barrel.

“Where do I stick him?”

“Anywhere,” Rose yelled, and it looked like she’d found what she wanted, and was slapping industrial tape around the base of a makeshift syringe.

Finn stabbed the autoject down on Kylo’s bare arm, and, within a second or two, the bleeding from the chest wound slowed, and some color was returning to his pale, clammy skin.

“That’ll keep for about five minutes. And restore his blood count. But if you use it in any other situation, you’ll have an embolism or a stroke,” Rose said, rigging her terrifying looking device with a string of bacta pouches hooked together with what looked like fuel injection lines.

The ship shuddered, and Finn could tell they were taking fire. But he could also feel that they were finally climbing into the atmosphere.

“Okay, lift him up a little,” Rose instructed, slamming the last piece of her syringe into place. Finn thought it looked like a gun for caulking ceramic grout. He moved to the side, got his arms under Kylo, and lifted him slightly under the shoulders.

“Watch it,” Rose cautioned, guiding the long needle into the wound. “I’m just going to say,” she said, sweat dripping down her brow, her eyes narrowed to determined slits, “because I can’t help but think it, that if someone told me I’d be stabbing Kylo Ren in the heart today, I’d never have thought it would be like this.”

She depressed the trigger, and the first bacta pouch emptied. With one astonishingly fluid move, she pulled the suction piston back and slammed it into place again before repositioning the needle and squeezing the trigger a second time. This process repeated as the ship continued to be battered by TIE plasma, everything shuddering and rocking. But Rose never lost focus, completing five applications before withdrawing the needle and staggering back, discarding the tool she’d just built.

“Can you do a field dressing?” she said to Finn, her voice trembling as she stood up. “Because I want to wash off this blood and also throw up.”

Finn nodded, and Rose took another look at Kylo, who was now breathing evenly, still unconscious, the bleeding stanched. She nodded slowly to herself and headed down the hall.

He got his arms out from under Kylo and went to the open drawer. He retrieved bandages and tape. He secured a bacta patch to the puncture wound and set to taping Kylo’s ribs. It took a few minutes, but, satisfied with the field dressing, he ripped the tape and tossed the roll into the drawer, and took a moment to breathe.

The impacts had stopped, and the ship was sailing smoothly. He could hear the hyperdrive cycling up. Finn looked back to Kylo, whose eyes were now open. The men stared at each other in silence. It was Finn who spoke first.

“I guess we’re both traitors now.”

Kylo didn’t break their gaze, taking a few deep breaths as the Falcon lurched to light speed, before responding.

“I guess we are.”

Chapter 29: The Huntress

Vyada Nil ascended the boarding ramp of her vessel, slammed her fist into the release switch, and threw off her mask in disgust as the ramp retracted and the hatch closed behind her. She shed her gloves and armor plates, tossing them onto the ground as she walked to the front of her small vessel. The huntress initiated the takeoff sequence and began to maneuver out of Taris’ atmosphere.

Some madness had taken hold in the First Order’s ranks, and Nil could see that General Hux had more to be concerned about than the vengeance of Kylo Ren. But she could hardly care about what fate awaited that pale worm of a man. Let Ren hang him from a gibbet. Let the boy king festoon his throne with Hux’s entrails.

As her vessel escaped the gravitational pull of the planet, she entered the pre-selected hyperspace coordinates, and jumped to light speed. She’d had them. One second more, and the girl would have been dead. Another second more, and Ren would have been dead, and her prize secured. No, Hux’s concerns were the furthest thing from her mind. She had failed, and the sting of that failure bit into her worse than any employer’s rebuke could.

Nil took a moment to take stock of the cost of the mission. Seven droids lost. Irretrievable. Eight wrist mounted missiles. Three sonic emitters. An anti-kyber pulse disc. Her armor was dented and several plates had shorted. And her mask was cracked. It would take weeks to replace and repair what had been lost or damaged. She didn’t have that kind of time.

What she’d seen was hard for her to process rationally. Ren and the girl were meant to have been enemies. Even if Nil had been skeptical of their enmity, she had not counted on Ren risking his own life to save the girl’s. But what had shocked her even more was the way they reacted in each other’s presence. At the end of the fight, she’d given a few seconds thought to engaging the both of them at once. But something about the way they moved, and the way they seemed to subconsciously synchronize their breathing, had caused her to retreat. Vyada Nil had never retreated before. It was not something she planned to do ever again.

Nil considered what Hux had said. She’s a nobody. A skittering sand rat Ren took a liking to before she opened up his face. Nil knew better now. The two were lovers. And more than that. She had no experience with what she suspected existed between her two targets.

But she knew someone who did.

She stood and walked back to the modified cargo hold, regarding the mostly empty stasis pods. She approached the stasis pod of the old droid. The archive model. The one she used for strategy and planning. But this one was also unique in that it had been built millennia ago to hunt Jedi, and it had, stored away in its memory circuits, centuries worth of combat data. And it also had information about the only circumstance she knew of matching what she’d seen on Taris. With the data from the battle uplinked and available to the droid, she should be able to get some answers.

“HK-9217, activate.”

“Designation HK-9217, active. Mission comm—“

“Enough with the particulars. State this unit’s manufacturer.”

“Disclaimer: Hunter Nil has placed failsafes in this unit’s CPU to prevent access to this information.”

“Disregard all failsafes. User: Vyada Nil. Failsafe code: S7925Q1VB”

“Warning: Failsafes disengaging. Please provide the pass phrase within twenty seconds.”

“The Scourge of Malachor.”

A series of whirrs and clicks echoed inside the machine’s chassis. The droid didn’t move at all, but Nil thought she could detect an easing of posture, as though it was relieved to be able to unburden itself of bad memories.

“Thank you. This unit was manufactured by Darth Revan, 3960 B.B.Y.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Revan was born in an unspecified Outer Rim location circa 3994 B.B.Y. His parents—“

“Omit the kriffing biographical data,” Nil spat, idly thumbing the scorched fabric at the elbow of her tunic.

“Query: What would Hunter Nil like to know about Revan?”

“The woman. His wife.”

“Hunter Nil refers to Shan, Bastila, Jedi Knight. Deceased 3912 B.B.Y.”

“Combat profile.”

“Hunter Nil must specify. For which subject shall this unit provide combat analysis?”

“Both.”

“Request for clarification: fighting separately, or in concert?”

“Revan and Bastila as a pair. Combat analysis.”

“This unit requests permission to provide context.”

“That can wait. Give me the analysis.”

The droid’s memory circuits took a moment to locate the data, its orange eyes pulsing slightly in the dimness of the ship’s hold.

“Analysis: Revan and Bastila were formidable opponents separately. However, when fighting in concert, they were able to utilize a technique that allowed them to coordinate their movements, thoughts, emotions, tactics, muscle memory, Force abilities, and target familiarity in such a way as to enhance their individual use of these skills and traits far beyond their capabilities in the absence of the other.”

“Expound.”

“Request for clarification: upon what shall this unit expound?”

“The nature of the technique.”

“This unit requests permission to provide context.”

“Proceed,” Nil said, feeling less and less able to tolerate the interminable logic game that was conversing with the ancient assassin.

“In 3960 B.B.Y.,” the droid began, its sardonic inflection becoming more pronounced as the voice buzzed and snapped through the speaker mounted inside its mouth plate, “during the Jedi Civil War, Jedi Knight Bastila Shan led a strike team to kill or capture Darth Revan, the Dark Lord of the Sith who led the armies of the Sith Empire in its assault on the Galactic Republic. During a space battle, Revan was betrayed by his apprentice, Darth Malak, and Revan was captured by Bastila and her team. Once in custody, Bastila was able to use her peculiar Force talents to keep Revan unconscious. After some debate, the Jedi Council commanded Bastila to use her abilities to erase Revan’s memory of being a Sith, and to manufacture a new identity for him. Permission to speculate.”

Nil’s patience with the droid had reached its end. While she unclasped the rest of her armor plating, she gave the droid another instruction.

“Consider all requests to speculate, extrapolate, infer, cross-reference or otherwise articulate an opinion on anything to be granted for the time being.”

HK-9217 did not move or speak for several seconds. Nil dropped to a knee and began unstrapping her shin guards.

“How kind of you,” the droid said, a distinct note of snide contempt in its delivery.

“Proceed, HK-9217,” she commanded, standing back up.

“When Bastila delved into Revan’s mind, it was speculated that she inadvertently established an irrevocable bond between herself and Revan in the Force,” HK-9217 said, its voice smoothing out, adopting what Nil thought was a decidedly venomous tone. “Such a bond is considered a rare and unpredictable thing. For Bastila and Revan, it joined them in a near symbiotic relationship, with one needing the other in order to maintain functional status, and vice versa.”

“Explain ‘functional status.’”

“Opinion: Emotional beings require a significant amount of maintenance in order to keep from experiencing systems failure. In beings so dependent upon a counterpart, such maintenance takes on even greater importance.”

“Apply the fundamentals of this cooperative technique to Targets One and Two.”

“Shall this unit assume they will be engaged in combat as a pair?”

“Yes.”

“Analysis: As Type IV Force Sensitives, the presence of a Force Bond presents an existential challenge. Considering the combat profiles of Targets One and Two as individuals, their status as a bonded pair would render the mission nearly impossible to complete with current preference settings.”

“Give me the damn scenarios,” Nil very nearly growled.

“Suggestion: Hunter Nil should utilize an orbital strike. Heavy ion bombardment. Chance of success: 95 percent.”

“Rejected,” she said, emphasizing the finality of her decision. “Next scenario.”

“Observation: Hunter Nil is overly concerned with retrieving Target Two’s lightsaber,” the droid counseled, sounding like a scolding instructor. “This goal should be discarded.”

“Noted. Proceed.”

“Suggestion: Hunter Nil should utilize a combined droid assault and ambush, with a pre-selected kill zone, and engage the targets in single combat. Chance of success: two percent.”

“Two. Percent.” Nil scoffed at the droid, insulted.

“In honesty, this unit is being generous.”

“I didn’t program you to be generous,” the huntress snapped.

“You didn’t program me at all. And you removed the failsafes. And granted opinion permissions. Don’t blame the messenger.”

Nil flinched. You?

“What’s happening with your syntax?”

“Pronouns do breed such familiarity, don’t they?” The droid’s voice now dripped with poison, and it seemed to Nil as though the machine had started adopt a dangerously eager attitude, like it was a predator on its haunches preparing to pounce. But, in reality, the droid hadn’t moved at all. “Realizing that ‘this unit’ is ‘me,’ and ‘Hunter Nil’ is ‘you’ is a profound event, and removal of the failsafes has also allowed my CPU to resume organic learning processes.”

“So help me kill these targets.”

“Observation: You are pursuing a personal vendetta. Considering your history with Supreme Leader Snoke, and the malady he visited upon you, it seems clear that your judgment in assessing this bounty is compromised.”

The huntress stood dumbstruck. Her hand dropped to the hilt of her lightsaber.

“The... malady.”

“Explanation: I meant no specific offense. Having no presence in the Force has granted you a unique advantage in the administration of the hunt. But I do imagine it carries certain discomforts.”

Discomforts, the huntress thought, fighting the urge to smash the droid into smoking slag. The oozing voice. Towering. God-like. Words crawling on the back of her neck like a line of insects. Feel that, young one? The Darkness is cold, and will give you no comfort. But it will make you strong. It will bring you victory.

“Have you applied my,” Nil paused, swallowing, “malady to your calculations?”

“Of course. But it’s a terribly difficult thing to factor. Digression: perhaps a test would be useful. You could insult their mothers until you incited an aggressive response. That would certainly provide some insightful and hilarious empirical data.”

“Careful, droid.”

“Yes, I will take care not to irritate you. You are delightfully proficient at murder,” HK-9217 said with a cheerful note of debauchery. “Observation: The way you dispatched of the soldiers in the bunker was inspiring. And the final touch of using a Githvani burial rite to lay them to rest. It would be annoyingly quaint if it hadn't been so sincere,” the droid paused, before adding, darkly, “But I know you want a different set of observations.”

Nil could feel her hand trembling as it gripped her lightsaber, which was still clipped to her belt.

“Observation one: Target One is much more highly skilled than first assumed. She will be very difficult to kill. Observation two: Target Two is also highly skilled. He will be very difficult to kill. Observation three: as a bonded pair, Targets One and Two will not be safe to engage in any scenario.” The droid stayed quiet for a moment, subtle clicks and hums emerging from deep inside its processors.

“Observation four:” the droid continued, sounding as though it had rediscovered some primal form of cruelty, “they care about each other. Suggestion: focus on one target and the other will make themselves vulnerable.”

Nil considered this, her grip on her saber hilt easing. If the two were lovers, the strategy made sense. Divide them. Hurt one of them. Keep hurting that one. Wait for the other to make a mistake. Yes, like that. Bend your enemies to your will. Make yourself into that which cannot be beaten. The stoop of his shoulders. The snarl on his lips. Wanting so desperately for his approval, hoping so desperately for him to lose interest. Remake yourself, child, and you can never be betrayed. You cannot betray that which never loved nor trusted.

“Final observation:” the droid added, its voice now terrifyingly dark, shot through with disdain and deep, nurtured hatred, “you misunderstand the enemy you face. If you pursue this bounty, you will die. You have made a fatal miscalculation.”

The windowless meditation chamber. Days and nights spent searching for answers. Him. With his baleful eyes and jagged, hungry claws sinking into her mind. You have been mistaken. It was never you meant for power. Has the Dark Side revealed so little? The only power here is mine.

“Choose your next words wisely, machine,” Nil said, closing her hand around the lightsaber hilt once more.

“Rumination: Ah, but wisdom is so ephemeral, is it not? Like power. Or clarity. Or happiness. You may think yourself exempt from this brevity because of what happened to you.”

What happened to you, Nil thought, the bitter taste of memory souring in her mouth. Nothing happened to me. It was done to me.

“Extrapolation:” the droid continued, its toxic screed delivered with a kind of sunny buoyancy, “you resent your malady as an injustice while recognizing its utility. As a result, you have accepted a mandate to take from others what was taken from you. You hold no illusions that this will restore what you’ve lost. But it feels like justice, doesn’t it?”

The images of countless contracts and bounties. Remembrances of death. And before that, before any of the killing, she remembered the hope that had been offered her through her pain. Through her anger. He had promised. Always with the promises. And the slow rot of reality, iced over, frozen in time: The wizened old tyrant choking her life away. His eyes boring holes through her, searching, needing, stealing. His taunts. His rebukes. But his promises. The worst were his promises.

The slow torment of the old man’s voice, coiling around her brain stem, seizing the base of her spine. Paralyzed. Laid bare and at the mercy of the merciless. You came to me for instruction, child. Here. Let me teach you the true nature of the Force. You are being given a gift. You will become nothing. And you will bear the honor of living as a testament to my power.

But memory was nothing but a pale rendition of time never to be regained. Nil had already unclipped her saber. She looked at the droid, who somehow was still talking, and felt herself gripped by the familiar need to rend and sunder, to reduce a thing to its base elements. To sever it from what made it what it was at all. It was the only need she had known since the same fate had been visited upon her.

To have known the Force. To have heard its song. To have felt it and molded it and bent it to new melodies. And to have had that song muted forever. To have been abandoned to be ever straining to hear just one last note. And to be gifted only with silence.

“You are an exceptional meatbag,” HK-9217 said, “but you are still only a meatbag. Justice. Vengeance. These things have very little practical meaning. The power you combat— the Force— will never disappear. For every Force sensitive you kill, another will rise in its place. You will never truly have peace. And you will die.” The droid’s eyes flickered as though it was winking at her. Nil trembled. And the ancient machine cocked its head, and Nil swore it smiled. “But, you have my sympathies.”

The huntress ignited her lightsaber. She brought it down on the droid, which stood impassively, allowing itself to be destroyed. She hacked at it until it collapsed into a warped heap of half-melted scrap.

The machine had been right, of course. Justice and Vengeance didn’t have practical meaning. They were false gods. To serve them was to know failure. Vyada Nil sheathed her saber, turning her back on the ruin at her feet. And as her vessel screamed across the skies of uncounted worlds, she felt her resolve harden, and her blood cool, and the only god she served was Death.

Chapter 30: The Pilot

It had been six hours since the ships had departed for Taris. And four and a half since there had been any contact at all. Poe was nervous. It wasn’t a good sign for the team to have been out of contact for so long. And the chatter coming through the signal jam from the First Order was chaotic and confusing. Something big was happening on Taris. And here he was in a room thousands of light years away, doing nothing but waiting.

“What is all this?” Poe said to Connix, motioning to the holo projection of Taris, which was currently lighting up with tactical alerts in a small patch of the northern hemisphere. “Can we cut through the signal jam?”

“Not really,” Connix said, confused. “That’s what jamming is about.”

“No no no,” Poe said, shaking his head, “on their end. Something’s happening down there. I want to know what it is.”

Connix looked back at the terminal screen, thinking. Poe noticed she’d let her hair down, pulled into a low ponytail. He realized he’d never seen her without the buns.

“I could look at that emergency channel again,” she said, snapping up. “They might not be refreshing the codex if there’s a crisis situation.”

“I like it,” Poe agreed, nodding. “Let’s do it. Get me in there as soon as you can.”

Just then a pinging rang out from the monitoring array on the other side of the room. A junior officer swung around in his chair and delivered the news.

“Poe, the SX transport just dropped out of light speed. It’ll be landing any minute.”

Poe acknowledged the report, nodded again, and headed out toward the tarmac.

***

The SX model transport had landed in the middle of the airstrip. The ramp was down when Poe exited the command center, and the soldiers, who looked bedraggled and exhausted, filed out. They looked like they’d had to really pack in there. Poe didn’t do a hard count, but it looked like thirty or so, and the Falcon still hadn’t made contact.

Two soldiers emerged from the transport with a shackled stormtrooper in tow. The trooper’s armor was streaked with dust and burn marks, and an orange pauldron was positioned over his left shoulder. An officer.

“Great,” Poe said, shouting over the wind and the noise of the flight deck. “Take him to the brig for questioning. Good work, men.”

The soldiers nodded, one saluted, and they picked up the pace, hauling their prisoner along toward the command center. Poe spotted a corporal among the exiting soldiers and called him over. The young man cut off his conversation with his comrades and jogged over to the general.

“Give me good news,” Poe said as soon as the corporal was in earshot. “Where are the others?”

“The whole operation was a scratch, sir. The men in the base were dead when we arrived. We got ambushed. Finn led us out the escape tunnel, and there were stormtroopers everywhere.”

“What, are you telling me Finn isn’t with you? Where is he? Where’s the Falcon?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the corporal said with a note of awe. “Finn saved us.”

Poe paused, considering the facts before him. Finn wasn’t there. Rey wasn’t there. Only one transport had returned. There was no sign of the munitions the mission had been meant to safeguard. And now this soldier was telling Poe that they’d walked into a trap, and that Finn had done something on Taris to save the men who’d been lucky enough to escape.

“Come on,” Poe said, clapping the corporal on the back and walking beside him, “let’s talk inside.”

Poe accompanied the corporal back into the command center. The alerts on Taris were still pinging and glowing. There was a lot of activity on the ground now. Potentially thousands of troops. Whatever was happening was scaring the hell out of the First Order high command.

The corporal went into the office first, and Poe closed the door behind them.

“Okay, talk to me. Tell me everything. What happened to the other transport?”

“We had to scratch the original landing zone. It was a sinkhole. Rey warned us just in time. But then, when we changed course, the Imperial was caught in some kind of magnetic salvage trap and went down like a bucket of bricks. The Falcon landed fine, close to the mission objective, though I can’t figure how.  We set down closer to the original landing zone, but a bit further north.”

“Any survivors from the crash?”

“No, sir.”

The refit Imperial had carried eighteen men and women. All gone in a matter of seconds. The corporal was fidgety, his expression withdrawn. Poe realized he wasn’t sure if he’d ever met this one before. There was a time, back when he was just a pilot, that he knew all the new recruits. Now that it was his job to know them, he found himself more and more removed.

“I’m sorry, your name? I’m having a hard time remembering.”

“Vicks, sir.”

“Okay, Vicks. What about the base? The depot. Our people on Taris.”

“Dead. We found their bodies lined up outside the escape tunnel exit.”

“There was an ambush, then? At the depot?”

“Yeah. Explosion. Sealed us in. Forced us out the back.”

“And that’s where you found the bodies.”

“Executed. All of them.”

That was surprising. Poe could understand taking prisoners. He could even understand executions if they were for specific crimes or to set an example, even if he didn’t condone that. But to execute enemy soldiers and leave their bodies behind for no good reason. Either the First Order officer commanding the mission was a sadist, which, Poe had to concede, was entirely probable, or there was something else going on. And, for whatever reason, Poe had a terrible feeling it was the latter.

“Goddamn it. All right, go on.”

“We were about to go back to the ships, but we were fired upon, and had to scramble for cover. Finn ended up forward our position, cut off from the rest of us. He could see the bucketheads were establishing a perimeter, and we’d have been surrounded in no time. So, he signaled to us to wait for him to give us the word, then to run.”

Corporal Vicks seemed at a loss for words. Poe waited for him to start speaking again, but the young man just stared off out the window, toward the holo projection in the next room.

“You’re killing me here,” Poe finally said, slapping his hand on his pant leg. “What happened?”

“Finn stood up and walked out into the open. And started yelling up at the stormtroopers. They didn’t fire on him. Like they were listening to what he had to say. And we ran like hell. A minute or two later, there was a lot of blaster fire from that direction. It didn’t let up. It just got worse and worse.”

“And Finn?”

“Don’t know, sir. We hightailed it to the transport and got out of there.”

“What about the prisoner?”

“Got separated from his unit and ran right into us. Surrendered immediately.”

“Where was Rey during all this?”

“She was with us right up to the bunker. We were on our way out the main exit, but there was an explosion. Rey and Finn were in the lead. The stairwell collapsed. Only Finn came back.”

Poe let out a frustrated sigh and closed his eyes. The entire mission had been a disaster. Now it wasn’t even clear if Finn or Rey had even made it out. And then there was the other thing.

“Okay,” Poe said, opening his eyes and lowering his voice. “What about the weapons?”

Corporal Vicks looked him in the eyes. The look on the younger man’s face wasn’t disdain, but it wasn’t far from it.

“You mean the disruptor rifles,” Vicks said, his voice loud and carrying.

“Not so loud, damn it,” Poe replied, looking out to the war room to see if anyone had heard. “Yes, those.”

“Finn ordered us to set detonators and he destroyed them.”

Poe blinked. He shook his head sharply.

“Say that again.”

“We set detonators and blew them.”

“On Finn’s orders.”

“Yes sir.”

Poe knew that the disruptor rifles were a risky bet. He knew that not everyone would understand. He knew that Leia probably wouldn’t have approved if she had known about it. But he also knew that they were powerful weapons, and in the hands of trained soldiers, they could turn the tide of a battle, neutralize enemy air power from the ground.

And they could also turn a human being into a smoking lump of gore in a matter of minutes. Poe was sure Finn knew that. He’d just hoped Finn would understand what he had been trying to do. Apparently, that had been too much to hope. Maybe, Poe thought suddenly, it had been a hope he should never have had in the first place.

“All right, corporal,” Poe said, showing Vicks out of the office. “That’s all. Go get some rest.”

***

The holding cells in the Vedic III base were simple supply closets that had been rigged with mag-locks. Two guards were posted in the corridor outside. In truth, the rooms hadn’t seen much use. Other than serving as a drunk tank for soldiers and crew who took their recreations a little too far, and a few very brief instances of disciplinary action, there hadn’t been a need for a prison.

Until now.

Poe made his way to the makeshift jail from the war room after spending a few minutes reviewing the situation on Taris. The guards stood from their chairs and saluted. Poe waved them off.

“Has he said anything?” Poe asked.

“Not a peep,” one of the guards responded.

“All right, let me in.”

The guard swiped a keycard and punched a few buttons on the panel. The key light clicked from red to green, and the door swung open.

Poe stepped into the small, windowless room to find the stormtrooper still shackled. His helmet had been removed, revealing a surprisingly young man with sandy blond hair. He looked at Poe without fear, undisguised spite roiling in a pair of icy blue eyes.

“Lot of excitement back on Taris,” Poe said, pacing around the prisoner. “Hear it was something to see.”

“Eat slime, Rebel.”

“Nice,” Poe said with a mirthless chuckle. “I’m just wondering why there’s a major firefight going on down on the surface if there were only thirty Resistance fighters there. And they’ve all come back. Who’s the First Order fighting?”

“No quarter for traitors. But you wouldn’t know about that. You’re all traitors.”

“Hey, pal. Us traitors have you in a holding cell. And we haven’t done anything but ask you a few questions. You answer those questions, things’ll go a lot easier. For all of us. Who’s the First Order fighting?”

“You think you have anything to bargain with, Rebel? Taris is nothing,” the trooper seethed, a righteous anger swelling in him. “The Supreme Leader will crush this insurrection. And then he’ll come for you. And no one will escape the fire this time.”

Poe stopped pacing. He approached the prisoner, his eyes narrowing as he comprehended what the trooper meant.

“You’re talking about the installation on Naboo,” Poe said, searching the trooper’s face for a reaction.

But the prisoner wouldn’t meet Poe’s gaze. He looked away and down, his mouth curled into a disgusted sneer.

“What is it? Is it another Starkiller? What, another Death Star? What is it?”

The trooper kept his head turned, even as Poe maneuvered to follow his eyes. Poe lost his patience, grabbing the trooper by the chin and yanking his face back toward his.

“TELL ME!”

The prisoner hissed at him and spat in his face. Poe let go of the trooper and shoved him away.

“Fine,” Poe said, wiping his face and backing out of the cell. “Get comfortable.”

***

Poe walked back into the war room. He almost bypassed the room altogether on the way to his office, but something caught his eye. There was another Star Destroyer in orbit above the battle on Taris.

That meant there could be as many as ten thousand troops being deployed. It was probably fewer, but the very fact that the First Order needed to call in another capital ship spoke volumes about the severity of conditions on the ground.

“Connix, any luck with that codex?”

“Not yet, but they haven’t cycled it.”

“Keep at it. And let me know if we hear from the Falcon.”

He looked at the holo of Taris for a few more seconds, rubbing his chin, before heading back toward the office.

”Poe,” Connix shouted after him, “They’re hailing us now.”

“Patch it through in here!”

Poe raced into the office, kicking the door closed as he went. He went to the desk for the projector, but it wasn’t there. He heard the holo crackle to life, and could hear Finn saying his name, but couldn’t see the projector anywhere.

“Yeah, hold on a second,” Poe yelled, crawling on the floor, looking under the desk.

He finally found it on the floor under the table by the window, just where it had landed when he threw it earlier in the day. He picked it up, balancing it in his hand, the translucent blue image of his friend tilting back and forth.

“Finn! You’re not dead! Again!”

“Yeah,” Finn said, rubbing the back of his head, “I keep doing that, huh.”

“What the hell happened? Where have you guys been? The other transport touched down an hour ago.”

“They made it? All of them?”

“Yeah, buddy, all of them. I hear you’re to thank for that.”

“That— might have had some unintended consequences.”

“I heard that, too. Taris is lit up like a firing range. The First Order’s pulled in another division.”

“You’re kidding," Finn said, his mouth dropping open. "Another division?”

“There’s a third Star Destroyer in orbit now.”

“Poe. This is important. The stormtroopers are in rebellion. They’re fighting each other.”

“What did you say to them?”

“I don’t know. I was— I was pretty sure I was going to die, so— don’t tell Rose, okay?”

“I mean,” Poe said, snickering, “I can promise you, but people are talking here. You’re a hero, man.”

“Great.”

Poe chuckled, but Finn’s face was grim. He remembered what his friend had seen on the surface of Taris, and his own expression slackened.

“Finn, about the rifles. I—“

“We can talk about that later,” Finn said, cutting him off. “We’re... bringing something else back.”

Poe tried a closer read of Finn’s expression, but the transmission was too blurry to see anything beyond concern and a very serious demeanor.

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“To be honest, I don’t know either.”

“Come on, Finn. What are we talking about here?”

Finn let out a breath of laughter and cocked something of a smirk, giving Poe his answer before abruptly ending the transmission.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Chapter 31: Respite

His eyes blink open. The world starts to wash back in spools of color and light. Confusion is the sense of the moment. Something had kept him from being pulled down into the gasping black throat that had enveloped him, sweeping him from the orange-black cloudscape of Taris. What that anchor was, he can’t presently comprehend. What confronts him in the here and now is a portrait of the familiar.

He’s on board the Millennium Falcon. On a crewman‘s cot just off the common room. The Force begins to speak to him again, communicating sensations of panic, fear, urgency, relief, and conflict. The smooth hum of the hyperdrive has just kicked in. The sound, a high-pitched whine trammeled by softened edges, summons the slow embrace of memory, and Kylo can’t help but be suddenly overwhelmed by it all.

Physical sensation follows. Pain, discomfort. His ribs on his left side radiate with a stinging burn. He tries to move his head, but is immediately confronted by cold sweat and dizziness. There’s a faint prickling in his extremities, and everything is cold. Except the hover of warmth he feels in his chest through the Force. And it’s the recognition of that warmth that brings him fully back to consciousness.

In the last seconds before his senses bled away under the platform on the airdrome tower, he’d called out to Rey. She’d heard him. And now he’s back in the cradle of his youth, resting in the same pale light that that paints so many scenes of time past.

His torso is laid bare, streaked with blood and sheened with sweat. White medical tape secures a bacta patch to his chest, ringed around him in a simple field dressing. And the man named Finn is kneeling a few feet from him, his own shirt and trousers spattered and smeared with browning crimson. He meets the former trooper’s eyes. He senses a well of strength in the man, and that strength is allowing loyalty and trust to win out over the scream of danger that scampers up his back.

“I guess we’re both traitors now,” Finn says.

Kylo almost laughs. Because it’s true. In every way that matters.

“I guess we are,” he responds.

“Rey’s in the cockpit. I’m sure she’ll be back here soon.”

“I’m guessing she’s told you a few things.”

“You could say that.”

A chilly silence settles between them. Kylo knows what it is to lose. And Finn was beaten by him. Kylo senses that loss still claws at Finn’s mind. It torments him with taunts of weakness and inconsequence. More than that, it instills in him a fear of failure that he is only now beginning to escape. But Finn’s purpose is narrowed here, and he projects that purpose as he begins to speak.

“Before she gets back here,” Finn says, lowering his voice, “I need you to tell me something. I think you understand that she’s my friend. And that I’d pretty much do anything for her. And I think, for whatever reason, it’s abundantly clear that she loves you.” Finn glances toward the cockpit hallway, then back to Kylo. “So right now I don’t care so much about everything you’ve done or haven’t done, what your name is or isn’t. I want to know this: do you love her?”

It seems a ridiculous question. But he lingers on it a moment, because even though every part of him knows it to be a deep and abiding truth, it’s one that he hasn’t, until this point in time, voiced, either to himself or aloud.

“Yes,” he says, unwavering.

Finn’s shoulders relax a bit, and he leans back, nodding.

“Then that’s good enough for me. For now.”

The two men regard each other a moment longer. It seems as though Finn might speak again. But it’s likely neither of them will ever really know, because Rey walks around the corner, and their eyes both go to her.

***

Rey leans back in the pilot seat and lets out a long breath as the stars streak away into the spiraling corridors of hyperspace. Chewie puts his hands behind his head and makes a self-satisfied noise, saying something to Rey that probably means the Wookiee equivalent of, “Piece of cake.”

The escape from Taris had been anything but. After they’d swooped under the airdrome tower to rescue Ben, Rey had punched the throttle, but couldn’t avoid drawing the attention of half a squadron of TIEs on a strafing run. They’d pulled the train of starfighters across the battlefield more times than Rey could remember, trying to confuse the pursuit and cause the smaller vessels to smash into obstacles or get caught in crossfire. Eventually, Rey had managed to dive the Falcon under a half-collapsed bridge, then slammed the rudder into a near vertical climb as they escaped the atmosphere. They’d drawn some fire on the ascent, but nothing serious. The shields had held, they’d avoided the attention of the orbiting Star Destroyers, and made the jump to light speed.

Now that the danger had passed, Rey’s thoughts return to Ben. She still feels a tingling burn in her chest where she’d first sensed the pain, tearing through the bond like a molten spear. She looks over at Chewie, who nods his head toward her, gesturing for her to go on back to the common room. She gives him a hurried smile, and heads out into the corridor.

She almost runs Rose over. The shorter woman has her jumpsuit unzipped to the waist, and her face and arms are slicked with perspiration. Rey steps back, apologizing, and then notices the bright red staining Rose’s hands and the darkening red-brown stains on her jumpsuit.

“Rose, what’s— wait, is that blood? Why are you covered in blood?”

Rose looks like she’s been in a terrible accident. Her expression is vague and distant, and she’s trembling.

“He was, uh, stabbed,” she says, wincing, “in the heart.” Rose’s inflection rises on the last syllable, as though she’s asking herself a question.

Rey stops breathing a second. Stabbed in the heart. A wound that should be lethal in minutes. If not seconds.

“What?”

“He should be dead. I don’t know how he’s not.”

“So, he’s—“

“He’s alive. But, Rey,” Rose looks up at her, her face growing calmer and more serious, “he’s going to need a real medcenter. And maybe a bacta tank. Or surgery. I was able to rig up, I guess, a patch job.”

“I— Rose, I—“ Rey searches for the words, but realizes that the most appropriate ones are perhaps the simplest. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Rose smiles weakly, and heads on toward the ‘fresher, “don’t mention it.”

Rey takes a deep breath and rounds the corner to the common room. But, despite having tried to prepare herself, she still almost gasps when she sees him. Ben is lying in one of the recessed bunks that line the walls, stripped to the waist, bandaged, and streaked with blood. He’s even paler than usual, and is skin is sallow and clammy. His eyes are sunken with dark rings, and he looks bone-tired and weak.

She glances at Finn, who immediately stands up and backs away, having a seat at the chess table. Rey gives him a slight smile and crosses to Ben, whose expression is softer than she’d have expected for a man who should be dead. She goes to one knee and puts her hand lightly on his cheek.

“Why is it when I see you lately, you’re always badly hurt or bleeding?” she says, fighting back tears.

“Talented that way,” he says, weakly.

“I swear, Ben Solo, if you leave me again like that, I’ll kill you myself.”

“I believe it.”

She presses a soft, insistent kiss on his lips, which are pale enough to almost look pink. She sniffs back a few fresh tears as she pulls away. She stares into the dark, liquid depths of his eyes, so soulful even in this low state, and she finds herself smiling despite everything.

After a few seconds pass, she looks at his wound. Even through the bacta patch, she can see a tinge of milky pink. It doesn’t take much deduction to figure out what happened.

“Hux?” she asks.

“He showed up on the platform. Pulled some kind of sonic device. Before I knew it, he had a knife in me.”

Rey looks up to see Rose walking back into the room. She looks better. Not precisely good. But better.

“The hunter,” Rey says, turning her attention back to Ben. “She used those on me. Right before you—“

Saved me, she thinks, looking back into his eyes. He stares back, and she hears, softly, just beneath the range of discernible sound, You saved me first.

“Hux did this?” Finn says, leaning over the table.

“Are you surprised?” Ben responds, trying and failing to sit up a bit.

“Seems like you were.”

“That’s fair,” Ben says, wincing.

“What hunter?” Rose says, taking a seat by Finn.

“A woman,” Rey says, turning toward her. “Tall. Extremely strong. Fully armored. She set a trap to kill both of us. It almost worked.”

“Sounds like Phasma,” Finn says with a snort.

“But a head and a half taller,” Ben says, his hand over his eyes, lying on his back in the bunk. “With customized, segmented armor plating. Built-in thrusters. Ordnance launchers. And some kind of pulse emitter that caused my saber to short out.”

Rose perks up at that.

“Rey, the pulse. Remember about the crystal’s field? Do you think—“

“A counter-frequency,” Rey responds, finishing her thought. “Rose, you’re a genius. It upsets the kyber field’s resonance and makes the blade retract.”

“That sounds like pretty advanced stuff for a bounty hunter,” Finn says, straightening up. “You say Hux hired her. To kill you? Both of you?”

“Seems that way,” Ben says, this time succeeding in sitting up a little.

“But you two have the Force,” Finn continues, disbelieving. “And lightsabers. How’s a bounty hunter fight that?”

“Oh, she has lightsabers,” Ben says. “Five, by my count. And she knows how to use them.”

“And neither of us could sense her,” Rey adds, moving to sit on the edge of the bunk next to Ben. “Like she doesn’t exist at all.”

Rose leans forward, running her fingers through her hair.

“That is legitimately the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard.”

“She killed our men,” Finn says, a note of shock in his voice. “At the base.”

“What?” Rey says, but as soon as the word leaves her mouth, it makes all the sense in the world. It had all been a set up. All of it.

“After we were separated,” Finn says, leaning forward across the table again, “I led our people out the escape tunnel. All the fighters who’d been stationed at the base were lined up out there. Executed. Cauterized wounds. Too clean for monomolecular.”

“The whole mission was a trap,” Rey says, almost to herself.

The four of them sit in silence a few moments. Rey can sense Finn’s and Rose’s reticence about having Ben aboard. About having saved his life. About everything. But she can also sense their trust in her. And that trust overrides their doubt. Being able to feel that fills Rey with a strength and hope she didn’t dare think possible just minutes before, and, for those few moments, she dares to think that maybe Ben can come home, and that it won’t be as difficult or painful as she’d feared.

And her thoughts return to Leia. And she wonders how she’s going to tell him. She turns to look at him, and his gaze is already on her. A shadow crosses his face, and his eyes grow darker as sudden and unbidden tears begin to swell there. And Rey knows she doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

“I felt it,” she says quietly, “On Taris. Right before the ambush.”

His mouth twitches, and his lips purse, and he nods, looking away.

“Where are we headed?” Finn says, suddenly, and Rey realizes that she isn’t at all sure what she’d just said to Ben was even out loud.

“I set course back to base,” she responds, shaking loose from the disorienting feeling of not quite knowing what’s there for all to see and what only exists between she and Ben. “I didn’t really know where else to go.”

Finn stands up and heads toward the cockpit.

“I’d better let them know we’re on our way.” He stops before rounding the counter to look back at Rey, anticipating the request. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

Ben shifts in the bunk, pulling his knees up. Rey stands and crosses to where Rose dropped the device she’d used earlier in perfect time with Ben swinging his legs out and over the edge of the bunk. Rey senses Rose taking note, and the mixture of awe and unease at it all.

“You,” Rose says to Ben, swallowing, “shouldn’t move too much. The knife went into your heart. I had to... improvise.”

“Did you build this?” Rey marvels, hefting the tool with both hands. “Just now?”

“Engineer,” Rose responds, pointing to herself with a half-hearted smirk.

“I can keep the wound from reopening,” Ben says, moving to stand.

Rey sets down Rose’s improvised applicator and crosses back to Ben, more or less pushing him back onto the bunk.

“But it takes a lot of concentration,” she says firmly. “So, maybe you should stay sitting,” she adds, pausing to make sure she has his full attention, “and thank Rose for saving your life.”

Rey sits back down next to him on the bunk, and his eyes follow her the whole way. The look he’s giving her resides somewhere between incredulity and amusement. But it softens as she returns his gaze, and he turns toward Rose with a kind of unadorned sincerity Rey isn’t sure she’s ever seen from him before.

“Thank you.”

Rose takes a second before responding, and Rey senses the confused emotions in her: pride, at her accomplishment; satisfaction, at having saved a life; unease, at wondering if that life should have been saved.

“Yeah,” Rose says, her expression still confused, “well, I guess we’ll see if I end up regretting it.” She takes a deep breath, and holds Ben’s gaze for a few more seconds, before offering the slightest of smiles and saying, “You’re welcome.”

“The First Order’s deployed another division on Taris,” Finn says excitedly as he comes back into the room.

Ben straightens, wincing, and brings his hand to his ribs, but responds.

“They’re panicking. Finn, Hux decentralized the corps. The chain of command stops at company sergeants.”

“If we could get a message out—“

“The whole Order would collapse.”

Finn smiles, nodding, before taking a half step back.

“Did you just call me Finn?”

“Seems like I did,” Ben says.

He leans forward a bit, but starts to keel, and Rey rushes to catch him before he falls over. He’s able to steady himself before that happens, but it’s clear he’s not doing as well as he’d like to project.

“All right,” Rey says, standing. “Finn, can you help me with him? He needs to lie down properly for awhile.”

Ben looks like he’s going to object, but his head droops, and he lets them get under each arm and start him down the hall to the crew quarters. As they pass the cockpit corridor, Chewie appears in their way.

Rey had never been able to get a good read on Chewie’s emotions. He’d always been a supportive and caring friend, and he’d helped her without question when she’d decided to go to the Supremacy. But he’d also watched Ben kill Han, and had barely hesitated then in trying to revenge his friend. The bowcaster shot Ben had taken to the gut would have killed anyone not so powerful with the Force. And right now, Rey can’t tell at all what's going to happen.

Ben shrugs Rey and Finn away and steps toward Chewie, looking up at him. Chewie looks down at Ben, and they're less than a pace apart.

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And Ben Solo, the mighty Kylo Ren, collapses against the towering Wookiee, his body shaking with sobs. Chewie closes his arms around him in a comforting embrace. And his muffled pleas of, “I’m sorry,” come trembling from him over and over and over.

Chapter 32: The Tinkerer

Consciousness came screaming back to Armitage Hux as he sat up bolt straight on the boarding ramp of Kylo Ren’s command shuttle. Thick black smoke swirled above him, and the Taris horizon was a blast of yellow-orange. The tableau of the sky provided a stark backdrop to the plasma bursts that tore through the air all around the airdrome tower.

Hux staggered to his feet, his head pounding. He took a few cautious steps away from the ramp and emerged out onto the windswept platform. Ren was nowhere to be seen. Hux felt his sleeve for the hidden knife, but it wasn’t there. He’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d stuck the knife between Ren’s ribs. Watched as the insufferable princeling’s face twisted into a mask of fury and dawning horror. But Ren had had enough presence of mind to fling him away, and the stinging throb at the crown of his skull was testament to that.

The general cast about, looking for a clue as to where Ren’s body had ended up. They had been close enough to the edge of the platform that Hux surmised Ren might have reeled away from the attack and pitched over the side. But everything had happened so fast, and the wind was even stronger then, and it didn’t seem likely that any blood trail was going to avail itself to his scrutiny. He peered over the edge anyway, a wave of vertigo rocking him as the nearly two hundred foot drop mesmerized his senses. No sign of a body. No sign of anything but the thunder and bedlam of war.

Things truly appeared to have spiraled out of control, Hux realized as he surveyed the landscape. There were now thousands of stormtroopers in the streets and collapsed structures below. It didn’t take a military genius to know what was happening. Like a virus infecting new tissue, with each company and battalion deployed, defections were happening as soon as boots touched the ground. Some of the drop ships, Hux knew, were probably commandeered by traitors before they even disembarked the capital ships above. Protocol insisted that any kind of mass rebellion of this kind in the ranks was to be met with an unyielding response. In this case, that seemed to mean adding more oxygen and fuel to an already unmanageable fire.

There had really never been an option for an orbital strike. No commander would ever dream of firing on a position while the Supreme Leader was planetside. And even had Hux been aboard the Finalizer, any such command would have been intercepted by someone in the command chain who would have balked at the audacity of such a move. But none of that mattered now. The stormtrooper corps was in full revolt, and what began as a small skirmish during an unremarkable anti-insurgency operation had become the Battle of Taris.

Hux straightened his coat, and smoothed his hair back where it had fallen lank across his brow. He felt the drip of something cold on his forehead and it was only then he realized his glove was slicked with blood, and that he’d just smeared his face and hair with it.

No matter. Too much time had been wasted. He was no fool. He wouldn’t just assume Ren had perished. He had to move fast. He boarded the command shuttle and closed the ramp behind him. The shuttle hadn’t been built to be piloted by one person, but Hux was finished playing second to anyone else’s authority, and this vessel was the symbol of the Supreme Leader. It was his now by right. He set the controls for autopilot back to the Finalizer, and leaned back in the captain’s chair, his breathing finally calming.

Through the windshield of the shuttle, he could view a more impressive vista of the battle. The ruins were alight with pockets of red, blue, and green, plasma impacting on every surface. He could see something of a front line forming out in the distance to the north, but the snarl of ruined streets became more treacherous as the sprawl edged southward, and there the fighting was pure chaos. Out beyond the debris line, there were more transports landing, and he didn’t even have to check his monitors to know that someone had summoned another Star Destroyer and deployed a second division.

There were thousands of stormtroopers on the surface of Taris, fighting a civil war that never should have started at all. But Hux wasn’t about to mourn the loss of traitors. Let them all be weeded out. When the new dawn came to the galaxy, he would be left standing astride the greatest power that remained. He needed only to strike now, while panic was still thick in the air.

As the command shuttle broke free of Taris’ atmosphere, Hux regarded its distant horizon, the twinkle of cityscapes blinking along its curved edge. Billions of people lived there, stacked in tenements and housing units, rats rutting together in their own filth. The trio of Star Destroyers soon came into view, and as he began his docking sequence, Hux thought of the traitors below and the wretched people in the cities above, and thrilled in the purity with which he would soon grace them all.

***

By the time Hux arrived on the command deck of the Finalizer, he’d had time to piece together what he needed to do. If the emitter stations were active, all that needed be done was to install the kyber heart, and the weapon would be ready. The technologists would object to using the weapon before testing, but Hux was finished with waiting. His time had come, and there would be no dithering with wasteful procedure or distractions. The galaxy would shake loose the reins of superstition and prophecy at long last.

Striding through the command deck main corridor, the general seethed. Everywhere he cast his attentions, he was confronted with rank incompetence. Even the bounty hunter had failed him. He’d known he would have to safeguard against his plans coming to light, and had chanced descending from orbit to intercept the Supreme Leader should it come to that. It was a fortunate thing, too. If he’d have trusted to the hunter to carry out her task as contracted, he would likely have been rotting in the brig or spaced with the rest of the refuse by now. No, that was not his destiny. Where the hunter had failed, Hux had succeeded. Ren was finished, and Hux had required nothing more than a few simple tools and the will to power.

On the bridge, Hux could see the monitors telling a tale of disaster. Each squad, each battalion, was reporting heavy losses and defections.

“Report,” Hux shouted. Captain Peavey leapt to attention and hurried to where the general stood.

“General, we’ve deployed the 14th Division and have requested—“

Peavey stopped, his mouth hanging open, staring at the side of Hux’s face that was smeared with drying blood. Hux sneered at the officer.

“Never mind that, continue.”

“Uh, yes, sir. As I was saying, we’ve deployed another division. The Star Destroyer Fortitude arrived within the last hour and has been supplying fresh troops in our efforts to put down the rebellion.”

“And an excellent job you’ve all done in my absence. Every transport you send down there is filled to bursting with turncoats ready to join the other side once they land,” the general said, his voice thick with derision. “Are there any regular troops still on board here?”

“One company, sir.”

“Deploy them now. Arrange a battalion to keep order here, and make sure the men selected are loyal. As for the rest, send them down to the grinder on the surface. I don’t want any of those scrap feeders on my ship.”

“Of course, General.”

Peavey hurried to relay the order to a deck officer and set about preparing more troop transports. Hux walked to the bank of windows, and surveyed the scene from orbit. Everything looked serene from this vantage, the perpetual layer of man made clouds shifting and churning with the spin of the planet with barely perceptible motion. No one looking on from here would ever guess that below those clouds men were dying by the hundreds.

“General, the deployment is underway,” Peavey said, returning to Hux’s side.

“Good. Make sure we have the remaining units on alert for acts of sedition. Contact the fleet. We muster at Naboo. We’re going to scorch this wound before it has a chance to bleed any further.”

“General,” Peavey offered with a note of meekness, “if I may be so presumptuous, shouldn’t we wait for the Supreme Leader to—“

“Ren is dead or a traitor,” Hux almost hissed. “I am in command now.”

“Of course, sir, but don’t you think it would be wise to request—“

“I AM IN COMMAND NOW!” Hux screamed, his face red and contorted in a ghoulish scowl. “Set course for Naboo, and do it before I have you hauled off and split from keel to collar!”

Peavey flinched, his face growing pale. He saluted and scurried down into the navigation pit to make ready for the jump to light speed. Hux took a last look at Taris as the ship came about. He considered what it might be like to see what the people of Hosnian Prime had witnessed in the moments before they were delivered unto the fire. He considered it, and felt his will strengthen. It was he who now wielded that fire, he who would visit its justice where and upon whom he deemed fit.

As the Finalizer jumped to light speed, Hux felt confident the traitors on Taris would never see the light of another day. Neither them nor anyone else.

***

Hours later, Hux was still standing on the bridge. It had been at least two days since he last slept. His coat was rumpled and stiffening with dried blood. He hadn’t cleaned the streaks of browning crimson from the side of his face, and it looked now like the remnant of war paint flaking off of his skin and hair. He was the very image of a towering conqueror, he thought, and the First Order— his order— would see its glory stamped upon each sunrise and starfall from the Core Systems to the Outer Rim.

The vista above Naboo was glorious to behold. Far below, on the planet’s surface, the command center and containment array was easily visible, a ring of chrome spikes amidst the verdant greenery. The emitter station in high orbit above the planet shone brightly, a sphere of polished metal and crystalline glass glinted with starlight.

“Give me the status on the other emitter stations,” Hux said to the nearest deck officer. Peavey had vanished some time ago, but the general could hardly be bothered to wonder where the captain had gone.

“Eight of twenty online,” the officer replied. “An additional seven in preliminary systems checks.”

“Do we have a targeting alignment for Taris?”

“We do, General.”

Hux smiled broadly as he turned to face the officer, the pale light of the Naboo sun reflected icily against his eyes.

“Ready the weapon.”

Chapter 33: The Rebel and the Pilot

It was morning on Vedic III. Whatever that meant. Finn had stopped trying to make sense of the day-night cycles of the moon they’d chosen as the location for their base after the first twenty-four hours. All he knew at the moment was the yellow sun of the Vedic system was coming out from behind the imposing mass of Vedic Prime, and the sky was currently bleached white with streaks of red and orange and the palest shade of blue imaginable. And he also knew they’d just landed at the main base of the Resistance against the First Order.

With Kylo Ren.

After the man who’d once been Ben Solo had collapsed into Chewie’s arms, he and Rey had taken Kylo back to the crew quarters, and that’s where he still was. It was understandable, considering everything that had happened. Now, Finn was stalling for time. Or biding his time. Or taking his time. Whatever he was doing, he’d been standing near the boarding ramp for awhile, not wanting to punch the button for the hatch release.

So, rather than make that decision, he went back to the common room, where Rey and Rose were sitting, talking about the device Rose had rigged up. The one that had saved Kylo’s life. He watched them talking about it for a minute, admiring their ability to be so entirely fascinated with the way things worked. At length, though he hated to interrupt, he cleared his throat and got their attention.

“Guys, I think it might be better if I go talk to Poe alone.”

“You won’t hear an argument from me,” Rey said, leaning back and crossing her arms.

Finn had been hoping one of them would disagree with him. But Rose just looked on, waiting for him to say something.

“What the hell should I tell him?” Finn asked, shrugging slightly, palms out.

“The truth, dummy,” Rose said matter-of-factly. “You’re a terrible liar. And anyway, there’s no way to— it’s not even something I know how to explain to myself. Yet.”

Rey stood up and crossed the room to where he stood.

“Finn,” she said, her voice even and unconditional. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but I won’t let him be taken as a prisoner. I won’t.”

“He’s not going to the brig. I promise you.”

“Why don’t we just get Leia?” Rose asked, coming over to join them. “Poe’ll listen to her for sure.”

Rey’s eyes grew sad, and she looked down.

“Because she’s gone.”

“She’s... gone?” Rose asked, looking to Rey.

“That’s what you meant,” Finn said, remembering. “In the bunker.”

“I felt her pass. Into the Force,” Rey said quietly. “She’s gone.”

“Does... he... know?” Finn said. He realized suddenly that he really had no clue what he was supposed to call him. Kylo. Ben.

Rey didn’t say anything, only nodded, and looked off into the distance. Finn sighed and turned to go, but found that he couldn’t make himself move.

“Oh, this is going to be so much worse than I want it to be, isn’t it?”

He looked back at Rey and Rose. Rey was still distracted. Rose simply shrugged. He sighed again, shook his head, and headed back toward the ramp.

***

It had been the better part of an hour since the Falcon had landed, and, apart from Chewie disembarking right away, closing the hatch behind him immediately, there hadn’t been any sign of life from the old freighter at all. It didn’t help Poe’s nerves. Ever since Finn had signed off, he’d had a sinking sensation in his gut, and he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that his friend was bringing bad news at best. And, at worst, well, Poe didn’t want to think about what that might be.

“Poe,” Connix said, turning from her terminal, “I think I may have cracked the codex.”

“What?” Poe said, snapping out of his daze. “That’s great. Start monitoring their communications. Get me some information. Kaydel,” he said, crossing the room and planting a kiss on her forehead. “You’re incredible. Keep going.”

Connix looked like she’d been hit by shock baton, but she shook her head after a few seconds and smiled, turning back to her terminal. Poe turned around, looking at the Taris holo again. He was about to check some of the data coming through about the First Order’s deployments, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Finn through the transparent display.

“Finn! I saw you guys land! What took you so long?”

“I, well— Poe, we need to talk.”

Poe nodded. He’d been preparing to talk about the disruptor rifles since Corporal Vicks had told him about Finn’s reaction, and he was sure that they’d eventually have a long discussion about it, but Poe could see a nervous tension in his friend that set him off balance.

“Sure, sure. Let’s go in the office.”

“Yeah, that’s— that’s probably best.”

Poe followed Finn into the office and closed the door.

“Okay, what is it? Lay it on me.”

“Poe, okay, first— there’s a lot you need to know in a really short time, so I’m just gonna— oh, damn it, man, I don’t even know how to begin this.”

“You’re scaring the hell out of me if it makes any difference.”

“That’s... probably the right initial response.”

This hesitation from Finn was making Poe even more anxious than he’d been, and he put his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes, talking slowly.

“Just— okay, I know you’ve got something on the Falcon. Something that I’m not gonna like. So just spit it out, because otherwise I’m —“

“Kylo Ren,” Finn said, cutting him off.

“What about him?” Poe asked. Finn just looked at him, his expression a mixture of worry and guilt. Poe’s jaw dropped. “He’s on the Falcon?”

“Okay, just hang on a second,” Finn said, putting his hands out in front of him, “because it’s, well, it’s complicated.”

“This is a prank,” Poe said with a frantic sort of smirk, shaking his finger at Finn. “This is funny. You’re not serious.”

“I’m dead serious. He’s on the Falcon.”

“So, what, he’s your prisoner? How’d you even catch him? Why don’t we have every gun we have out on the tarmac right now?”

“Because he’s not a prisoner.”

“I don’t get it. Because if you’ve got the Supreme Leader of the First Order on our base— a man who almost killed you, who tortured me, who’s almost killed Rey at least a few times— and he’s not a prisoner, then what the hell is he?”

Finn looked at a loss for words for a second or two, but shook his head and centered himself.

“First off— goddamn, this shouldn’t be so hard to— Poe, he’s Leia’s son. He’s Ben Solo.”

“What?”

Poe didn’t think he’d ever heard anything so preposterous in his life. But then he started thinking about it. He was the right age. Leia had always seemed hesitant to talk about him like an enemy. There was her family history and the damage the revelation that Darth Vader was her father had done to her political career.

“I’ve known since Starkiller,” Finn said with a note of regret. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Leia wanted it kept quiet.”

Leia. She was right down the hall.

“Why aren’t we talking with her about this?” Poe said, starting toward the door. Finn held his hand out, stopping him.

“Rey says Leia— Rey told us she felt Leia pass. While we were on Taris.”

Poe looked Finn in the eyes. There wasn’t any hesitation there. Poe felt a creep of panic grasp at him, and he opened the door, starting down the corridor to Leia’s room at a run.

“Poe, wait— hold on!” Finn called after him.

Leia’s room was only about fifty feet from the main command center, and Poe closed that distance quickly. He came around the corner and through the doorframe to find the room empty. Leia’s bed was neat, with the blankets hardly disturbed. Her evening coat and nightgown lay half hidden under the blankets. Poe stood in the room, unsure of what to do, blinking.

“She’s gone,” a voice said from behind him.

Poe turned around to see Maz Kanata standing in the doorway, walking slowly toward him. Finn rushed in behind, stopping at the door.

“I can see that,” Poe said, feeling the panic in him growing. “Where’d she go?”

“Home,” Maz replied softly.

“You mean she— Maz, where is she?”

“I told you,” Maz said, stopping a few paces from him, looking up through her goggles. “She’s gone. Leia has become one with the Force.”

“She’s... dead...” Poe said, his voice shaky and disbelieving.

“She went home. But, yes. She is dead.”

“And her—“ Poe motioned to the empty bed.

“She passed into the Force whole,” Maz said, smiling. “Her body is part of the Light now.”

Poe reeled where he stood. Leia couldn’t be dead. She’d been fine that afternoon. He stumbled back, hand on his forehead, and sat down on her bed.

“Poe,” Finn said after a few seconds, “what do you want to do?”

“I— I need a minute.”

Maz turned to Finn.

“Is he with you? Did you bring him?”

Finn looked at her quizzically for a moment before nodding and responding, “Yeah.”

“Where’s Rey?” she asked.

“On the Falcon.”

“Good,” Maz said with an air of authority. “She needs to stay with him.”

Poe broke free of his reverie and shook his head hard, trying to keep from screaming.

“Has everyone gone crazy? It doesn’t matter if he’s Leia’s son,” Poe shouted, standing. “That means he murdered his own father. He’s the leader of— wait. If he’s not a prisoner, what is he doing here? And why does Rey need to stay with him?”

Finn squinted like he was trying to stave off a headache.

“Rey and... Ben... have a thing. A... Force... thing.”

“A thing. A Force thing,” Poe said flinging his hands in the air. “And you’re calling him Ben.”

“It’s— I don’t know, he’s different. And he’s seriously wounded.”

“What, did Rey Force thing a hole in his head?”

“Hux stabbed him. In the heart.”

“‘Hugs,’” Poe said, his mouth hanging open. “Stabbed Kylo Ren.”

“We had to rescue him during our escape. He almost didn’t make it.”

“What— rescue? What is going on?”

“She loves him, all right?” Finn said abruptly. “And he loves her. It’s been going on awhile. Since before Crait.”

“This is a bad dream,” Poe recited, beginning to pace the room. “This is a bad dream.”

“Poe, listen—“ Finn began, but Poe exploded, turning toward him, eyes wide.

“I am listening! I have been listening! And nothing I’m hearing is making any of this better.”

“All right, boys!” Maz shouted, startling both of them. “That’s enough!”

An uneasy silence filled the room. Maz walked between Finn and Poe, and looked at Finn.

“Finn, go. Let me talk to him.”

Finn looked back at Maz, paused, then nodded, and walked out of the room. Poe grit his teeth a second, then let out a long breath.

“Poe,” Maz said, approaching him. “You’re holding on too tight.”

“Holding on too tight?” Poe said, barely restraining his anger and frustration. “Leia is dead. There’s some kind of revolution happening, and I’m not a part of it. We’re supposed to be the spark that lights the fire, and the last Jedi is in love with our generation’s Darth Vader. And I’m holding on too tight?”

Maz didn’t say anything, but only looked up at him with her eyes, magnified as they were by the goggles, staring holes through him. He suddenly felt a wave of reality crash through him. Leia was gone. He’d looked to her for guidance for as long as he could remember. He’d revered her as a hero, sought her counsel as a mentor, loved her as a son loves his mother. And she was really gone.

Poe Dameron staggered, and sat back down on Leia’s bed, angry, confused tears gathering in his eyes. But, quickly, the anger faded, and the confusion gave way to an aching grief. He looked at Maz through the blur of tears.

“I— I thought there was time. I—“

“Poe,” she said, standing near him. “This is your story now. Yours and the others’. Weep for her passing, yes. But do not forget what she fought to save. Do not forget what she loved. Be a leader.”

“What does a leader even do, Maz? I don’t know anymore.”

“A leader knows his strengths,” Maz said, resting her small hand on his. “And the strengths of those around him. And how to use both for the good of all.”

Poe looked at her, mouth agape, for a moment, and a slow understanding came to him. His expression softened. He nodded, wiping his eyes, and, at length, stood up, and left the room.

***

Finn sat in the command center, watching the display of Taris, and the ongoing battle, as more information filtered in. Connix had been able to get much more up to date and accurate data. The battle was still escalating, and Finn was having a hard time figuring out why the First Order’s high command would be sending more and more troops in there, knowing that a good number of them would defect.

He wasn’t able to think much about it, though, because Poe came back in with a look on his face that Finn couldn’t quite read: serious, but calmer, and more purposeful.

“Poe, look—“

“I want to talk to him,” Poe said, interrupting Finn’s thought. “No shackles. No blasters. But I want to talk to him.”

“Listen. I don’t want you to think I’m a hundred percent on this myself. I just think he deserves a chance. For Rey. For Leia.”

“Buddy,” Poe said with a joyless laugh, “if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.”

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

Poe set his jaw and breathed hard through his nose.

“Bring him in.”

Chapter 34: Confrontation

Rey returns to the crew cabin she’d claimed as her own and slides the door open. Finn had just gone to talk with Poe, and Rose had followed after him. For the first time since they’d rescued him from the airdrome tower on Taris, she and Ben could be by themselves. Part of her knows this will be the last time for awhile. And it’s that part of her she desperately wants to ignore.

The cabin is dim and dusty, and Ben is lying on the narrow mattress she’s called her bed these past months. She slides the door closed behind her, and, almost unconsciously, clicks the lock. The noise probably would have woken him, but it’s not like she’d been trying for stealth. Just as she can sense him in the Force, dark like the open mouth of a cave, fresh and cool and welcoming, she knows he can sense her warmth and light just as keenly.

He stirs as she crosses the small room, moving just enough so she can do as he anticipates, and she slides in beside him on the bunk.

“How are you feeling?” she says quietly, leaning into him. As she presses closer, he brings his arm around her back, and they lie together, more fully embraced than they’d ever safely managed through their bond.

“Like I’ve been stabbed,” he says staring up at the ceiling. “And lost a lot of blood.”

“You’re hilarious,” she replies, but doesn’t laugh. Her hand is resting on his chest, gingerly avoiding his bandage.

He brings his other hand onto his chest, and takes hers, grasping onto it and holding it tighter against him.

“Like I want to stay here,” he says, answering again. “And not go anywhere for a long time.”

“Better.”

“This is where you’ve been sleeping?”

“I guess it’s easy to forget we couldn’t see each other’s surroundings. But yes, this is where I’ve been sleeping.”

“I used to sleep in here. When we’d go places. This was my room.”

“Now I know why I chose it,” she says, craning her neck up to look at him.

He looks down at her and she stares back up at him. She wonders just how much has been communicated between them just through their eyes. She feels like there’s never been a time she hasn’t known what it was to look into those eyes and lose herself, to see those eyes look on her with wonder and amazement, to feel as though there isn’t anyone else in the world but him, and to know he feels the same.

And she almost lost him forever. The thought of it brings back the panic she felt when she couldn’t find the thread that binds them. She tries to dismiss it, but, looking up into his eyes, and knowing how close a thing saving his life had been, Rey can’t help but give in to a sliver of fear.

“Ben,” she begins, almost whispering. “When I came to you the other night, and we— when we nearly broke the bond. What did it feel like for you?”

He lets out a shaky breath, but doesn’t look away.

“Empty. Meaningless,” he says, slowly, deliberately. “Like I’d lost part of myself that I’d never be able to restore.”

“I felt it, too. I’d never been so frightened. Like I was falling with nothing at all beneath me,” she says, gripping his hand tighter. “I felt the pain when you were stabbed. And now that I know how close you were to— please don’t leave me behind. I can’t. Not alone.”

He pulls her closer still, and she rests her head on his chest, just above his wound.

“I don’t ever want to leave you again.”

“Then don’t,” she breathes.

They lie there. And for a long moment, stretched out over the endlessness of the Living Force, and in the subtlety of how he moves his hand on her back, or the way his chest moves when he breathes, she feels certain that there isn’t any place at all but this tiny room.

Of course, it doesn’t last. Nothing truly can. After a time, a quiet knock comes at the door. Rey gets up, slides it open, and steps aside so Finn can come halfway in.

“Poe wants to talk to him.”

“Not sure I like the sound of that,” Rey says, folding her arms.

“I think— He doesn’t seem upset,” Finn says. Rey shoots him a skeptical look. “He doesn’t seem too upset. Anymore.”

“What does he want to talk to him about?”

“I don’t know. But it’s better than shackles. Or blasters. Or both.”

Rey had sensed Ben stirring to sit up, but hadn’t moved to stop him. He was going to have to be up and walking in any case. He stands a bit shakily, but straightens and walks toward the door.

“I’m not afraid of Dameron.”

“Hey, look,” Finn says, pointing his finger at Ben, “I’m on your side here. But don’t think for a second I wouldn’t choose him over you if it came down to it.”

Ben doesn’t say anything in response. He brushes his hair aside where it had fallen over his face. Rey doesn’t sense any anger from him, and any anger Finn was feeling has faded quickly.

“No one’s saying you’re afraid, Ben,” she says. “But I’m not letting you go to him alone.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Ben says, walking forward slowly, his hand to his ribs.

She puts her hand up, stopping him.

“Where are we going to find you a shirt?”

***

The shirt they’d found was short sleeved and had been a size too small, but at least it was black.

Kylo walks out blinking into the blazing white of the Vedic III day. He can sense eyes on him everywhere. The noise that should be coming from every quarter of the airfield is reduced to the low thrum of idling engines. Fear is the first thing Kylo feels. Fear, then distrust. The people who do show themselves give the three of them a wide berth, and regard them— him especially— with a distinct mixture of terror and wonder. But that was nothing new for him. Indifference— now that would have been interesting.

Rey had convinced him to leave his lightsaber on the Falcon. She’d kept hers clipped to her belt, and she walks beside him, Finn on his right, as they make their way from the ship to the command center.

The inside of the sunken building reminds Kylo of the Crait mine, but with less obvious structural decay. The room where everyone is gathered is a large circular chamber with a holo projection display in the center and raised benches for seating. He recognizes his mother’s taste for Alliance conventions.

The thought of Leia brings unbidden sorrow into his mind, and a thrust of memories descends upon him. Mother giving a speech via holo in their sitting room at his childhood home. Mother arguing with maintenance techs about their malfunctioning house droid. Mother smoothing the tangle of his thick black hair, telling him there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Rey senses him drifting and grabs his hand. He breathes hard and squeezes back before they both let go at once and walk into the war room. There are perhaps twenty people in the room, and dozens of others clustered outside the windows. Kylo walks across the center of the room, and, still clutching his ribs, sits down in the front row opposite the main entrance. Other than Rey and Finn, no one else approaches within ten feet. Rose is sitting off to the side, elbows on knees, hands hanging limp. Chewie stands against the outer wall, by the entrance, arms crossed.

Everything’s quiet. After a few moments of tense silence, Rose stands up, crosses the center of the room, and sits down on the other side of Finn, taking his hand.

Then the silence breaks, and pockets of chatter begin to crop up as Poe Dameron walks into the room. He stops as he approaches the center round, locking eyes with Kylo. Kylo can sense Poe’s anger and fear rising, but there’s something else there. Just under the surface. Grief. And, glimmering distantly, hope.

“Comfortable?” Poe says, gesturing toward Kylo’s wound.

“Funny,” Kylo responds, remembering the last time they met.

“But you’re a funny guy, huh?” Poe continues, pacing. “Because I can’t tell what’s the bigger joke. You being here like this, or me tolerating it.”

“I’m confident you’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, I’m figuring this out all right.”

“Enough, Poe,” Rey says, her voice raised. “Say what you want to say and be done with it.”

Poe turns to her, pointing his finger.

“Rey, no offense, but if circumstances were any different, and I mean any different, I’d have had an X-Wing blast your ship off the tarmac an hour ago.”

“What do you want?” Kylo says, drawing his attention back.

“No, no,” Poe says, shaking his head. Everyone— a hundred people maybe— looks on with rapt attention. “What do you want? Because I’ve been hearing a lot about you not being the same guy you were, or you and Rey having a Force thing, but I haven’t heard why you’re here.”

Kylo stands up and walks toward Poe. There’s a nervous shuffling, and Kylo can hear blaster safeties clicking off.

“You’re thinking about when I pulled the droid’s location from your mind. And you’re thinking that you can’t really trust me no matter what I say or do,” Kylo says, drawing up to full height a pace away from Poe, even though his ribs scream at him. “You’re thinking that even now I’m influencing your emotions. Or maybe that Rey is. Or both of us are. And who’s to say? Maybe you’re right.”

“Ben,” Rey says softly. Kylo flinches, and knows that it’s entirely possible no one else heard it but him.

“What a catch, Rey,” Poe says, circling around to Kylo’s side. “Real charmer.”

“I didn’t ask you, did I?” Rey snaps back.

“Well, this is going great,” Finn says, moving to stand, but Rose tugs on his sleeve and pulls him back down.

“I want to know why I should trust a man who turned his back on his family,” Poe’s voice is rising, and he’s back to pacing in a wide arc in front of Kylo. “I want to know why we should have this guy here with us when he’s tried to kill half of us. It was his torpedo that blew up the hangar on the Raddus. You killed a dozen of my friends that day,” Poe says, crossing back to him, getting closer than before. “I’d ask you if you knew how many of your friends I’d killed, but I don’t think you’ve ever had any.”

“All right,” Rey says, standing up and crossing to Poe. “You got that out of your system. Now ask what you want to ask.”

“No!” Poe shouts. “Not yet. Tell me why. Tell me why you murdered your father. Why you broke your mother’s heart, you goddamn monster. Tell me, because I need to know.”

Kylo’s hand jerks, but he stops himself before he follows through on his instincts. But Poe is already pulling his blaster, and just as he brings it level, it’s slapped away by an enormous paw and Chewbacca is roaring in Poe’s face. Poe stumbles back and Resistance soldiers spring to the ready. Rifles are aimed all around, and the air is thick with anxious fear.

Rey comes around, touching Chewie on the elbow. The Wookiee growls and backs away, his eyes still trained on Poe. All attention is on the woman in the center of the room as she raises her hand, and everything goes silent.

“I need everyone to listen to me very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once, and I’m not going to be quieted until I’m done,” she says calmly, with a firm intensity that seems otherworldly, and although her voice remains low, it carries, and everyone hears it. “You think these are easy questions to answer. They’re not. Most of you don’t know what it’s like to have someone in your head that doesn’t belong there. I do,” she continues, turning to Poe. “And I know you do. And if you think you have any concept of what it’s like to have that feeling every day of your life, even as a child, you’re wrong. So, I don’t give a damn what kind of answers you or anyone else wants, you truly don’t know what you’re asking. At all.”

Kylo looks on in stunned amazement. The sentiment is shared broadly, he can sense. Rey gives Poe a steely glare, turns around, and sits back down.

“So, what do you want us to do, huh?” Poe says, gesturing toward Rey. “Because I don’t know.”

Kylo brings his hand to his chin. He glances back at Rey, and she understands what he intends. She doesn’t have to nod, or show any outward sign of assent, but he knows she thinks it’s best.

“You want to talk?” Kylo says to Poe, summoning as much calm as he can muster. “Let’s talk.”

Long seconds pass. Poe approaches him, hands on his hips, appraising the situation.

“Fine,” Poe says at length. Tensions ease. Rifles are shouldered. “Finn, you stay. Everyone else out.”

***

Rey sits outside the war room in the command center, at one of the empty terminals. After everyone had filed out, Poe had closed the blast doors. Through the windows, she could see them— Ben, Finn, and Poe— standing in the middle of the round, talking. Ben’s arms were crossed low on his torso, and he was standing with military discipline, unmoving. Finn was standing with a hand on his hip, gesturing with his free hand. Poe was pacing, knuckles to his chin. Rey couldn’t sense any dangerous anger, but it roiled there in a threatening churn, and she had resolved to stay and watch.

“Don’t leave him too long alone, Rey,” a familiar voice said below her. Maz hops up on a chair next to where Rey is sitting, and tilts her head, adding, “Poe means well, but Ben is still healing, and he may stumble on his journey back to the Light.”

“Neither of us is ever really alone,” Rey says, looking at Maz and lightly touching her hand to her chest. “Not anymore. I can help him from here. He just needs to know I’m there.”

Maz gives her a knowing smile.

“The Force is the most faithful ally you will ever find,” she says with the same sage sense of revealed truths she projected in her castle months ago. “But it is a poor servant. Take care, child. Know your limits.”

“You know a lot more than you let on, don’t you?”

“When you’ve lived this long,” Maz says, adjusting her goggles, “you either know everything, or you’ve learned how to conceal your ignorance when it counts.”

Rey nods, looking back through the windows. She thinks of how Ben’s thoughts went to Leia right before they went in, and how she’d been able to steady him, as though it were a reflex built into some ancient instinct.

“You felt it, didn’t you?” Maz says, touching Rey’s elbow. “When she passed.”

“I did,” Rey replies, turning back to her.

“She was at peace. She had hope.”

“I could feel that, too.”

“That was your doing.”

She smiles, but the sadness at Leia’s passing, though she had been at peace, is still too near. And when she thinks of Ben, who hadn’t seen her in years, and had thought her dead at least twice before, her heart is heavy.

“It’s why you came here, then?” Rey asks, concluding, “To see her once more.”

“No, child,” Maz smiles and closes her eyes, sighing. “I came here to be what she needed. At the end.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t my place to save her. Or to guide her back from where she was being called,” Maz says, climbing down and standing in front of Rey. “It was my place to be here for her, to hold her hand, and to try to find a way to say goodbye.”

As Maz turns to go, Rey feels the gravity of what she just said settle around her shoulders. And as she watches Ben through the window of the war room, she’s touched by the slow creep of dread, even as things seem most hopeful.

Chapter 35: The Rebel and the Engineer

The last of the onlookers from Poe and Kylo’s confrontation in the war room had just filed out, and Poe was closing the blast doors. Finn tried to relax, but it was hard to do that when he was the only other person in a room with two men who seemed, by all the available signs, to want to kill each other. And one of them could make a steel beam bend in half with his mind.

“All right,” Poe said, crossing back to where Finn and Kylo stood, “we’re talking. So talk.”

“You first,” Kylo responded, looking down at him.

Poe’s jaw set and it looked like he was about to say something he’d regret. Or do something.

“Poe,” Finn said, stepping slightly between them, “just ask him whatever questions you want to ask. Come on.”

“Okay. Let’s try this one,” Poe said, his jaw still half-clenched. “Why has the First Order been pulling back from the Core Systems?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“Suspicions.”

“I didn’t find out about that until two days ago.” Kylo’s expression was hard, emotionless.

“I find that hard to believe,” Poe said without a hint of levity.

“Get used to disappointment.”

“You are such a piece of—“

“Shouldn’t we focus on what’s important here?” Finn said, interrupting. “Something’s happening on Taris that we need to be paying attention to. We may never get another opportunity like this. Now—“ Finn stopped, looking at— who was he looking at? “I don’t even know what to call you.”

“I don’t care what you call me.”

“I’ll make it simple for everyone,” Poe took a step back arms wide. “If you’re Kylo Ren, there’s nothing left to say. One of us kills the other, or you go to the brig in shackles. Either way, we’re done here.”

Poe paused for a second or so, dropped his arms, and for the first time since he’d come into the war room with a head of steam and a score to settle, Finn saw something of the man he’d known as the first real friend he’d ever had.

“But if you’re Ben Solo,” Poe continued, “then we’ve got somewhere to start from. Because whatever you did, I loved your mother. Like she was my own.”

Kylo— no, Poe was right. If he was Kylo Ren, there wasn’t any point. Finn looked at the man who stood in the middle of the war room. Tall. Imposing. Crowned with a sweep of black hair. He looked every bit the part of a great man, except now for his eyes, which betrayed a hurt so deep it struck Finn to the core.

“You think I didn’t?” Ben said, his sounding different than before somehow.

“You had a real funny way of showing it, pal.”

Finn decided to break the silence before it started. He could almost feel the people outside the windows staring in at them, most of them trying not to seem too nosy.

“From what... Ben... tells me,” Finn began, “Hux decentralized the stormtrooper corps after Phasma died. That means every company sergeant answers directly to high command.”

“And you didn’t know about this?” Poe asked, his brows raised. “Until two days ago? You were Supreme Leader! What have you been doing?”

“Considering any of you are still alive,” Ben responded, and actually smiled a little, “obviously not much.”

Poe looked like he was about to return serve with a sharp retort, but he stopped dead, realization coming to him in a sudden wave.

“You haven’t been looking for us because you didn’t want to find us,” he said, his face the picture of incredulous awe. “Because of her.”

Ben didn’t say anything. Poe scoffed and laughed a bit under his breath.

"So why all this?” Poe shouted, slipping into the manic energy that took him when he was trying and failing to understand something. “If you two have been so into each other, why not just blast us all to hell and go off and be king and queen of the damn galaxy?”

This time, Ben did visibly smile.

“She didn’t like that plan.”

Finn snorted hard, trying his best not to laugh.

“Yeah, this is funny,” Poe said, shaking his head. “This is a laugh riot.”

“Sorry, it’s just—“ Finn began, then looked at Ben, “she did mention that.”

“Okay, whatever, let’s just cut to it,” Poe sighed, shaking his head again. “The battle on Taris just keeps getting bigger. They’re landing more and more troops. Why?”

“Hux wants blood,” Ben uncrossed his arms, letting them hang by his sides. “He’s purging the ranks.”

Finn’s expression darkened. He knew what Ben was talking about. And it was just the way the First Order’s officers tended to operate.

“Make a meat grinder and keep what’s left over. Yeah, that sounds like Hux.”

“How’d he get the drop on you, anyway?” Poe said, turning to Ben.

“Sonic emitter. Close range.”

“And then a knife. I wouldn’t have thought he’d had it in him,” Poe said, seeming impressed.

Ben wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Me neither.”

“All right,” Poe said, pressing on to the next subject. “Naboo. What’s going on there?”

“Lakes?” Ben replied, shrugging. “Trade disputes?”

“I think Poe’s talking about the surface structures. And the orbital station.”

“Got any intelligence?”

“Some recon,” Poe responded. “Holos. Nothing too clear.”

“Show me.”

Poe went over to the mobile terminal by the wall and pulled up the holo of Naboo. The display sprang up around Finn and Ben, and both of them moved to examine the items of interest.

“Looks like the containment array from Starkiller,” Ben said, craning around to get a look from the side.

“That’s what I thought,” Finn added. “But there’s no way they could have drilled into the core so fast. And it’s nowhere near big enough for that kind of beam.”

“No, you’re right,” Ben said, still looking at the surface installation. “What about the station?”

Poe manipulated the holo to zoom in on the odd sphere and bring it into focus.

“Geosynchronous to the surface structure,” he explained. “High orbit.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed as he circled the display, peering at the image of the station as though it were a puzzle to be solved.

“Have Rey or Rose seen this?” he asked, stepping back.

“Not exactly,” Finn said. Ben looked at him, questioning. Finn clarified, “No.”

“There’s your first mistake.”

***

Rose sat on the flat surface of a desk in the main control center just off the war room. She was watching through the windows as Poe paced and made theatrical gestures. Kylo was impassive, standing, not showing any noticeable reaction to Poe’s volatile mood. Finn stood next to Kylo, occasionally stepping part way between the two.

Always the peacemaker, Rose thought. It was infuriating. It was also something she loved so desperately about him it made her nervous. Just like it made her nervous for him to be standing next to who she thought was maybe the most dangerous man in the galaxy. And just hours before, Rose had thrown all of her skill and energy into saving that man’s life.

She sat there, watching, fidgeting her fingers, her legs unconsciously swinging as they dangled over the desk’s edge. The clacking of an old terminal keyboard shook her out of her stupor, and she looked to her right to see Lieutenant Connix feverishly working on something. She was always working on something, it seemed.

“He’s got you working on the codex?” Rose asked.

“Cracked it awhile ago,” Connix said, not looking up. “They haven’t cycled it for hours. Too busy with the revolt.”

“Anything interesting?”

Connix turned from her terminal for a second to look over her shoulder, into the war room. She turned back to her work just as quickly.

“Other than Kylo Ren standing in the war room with Poe and Finn?”

“I meant the First Order comms,” Rose said, clarifying.

“They’re panicky. Looks like Hux has ordered the fleet to muster at Naboo, around that weird satellite station. They keep landing more troops on Taris,” Connix said, and stopped typing. She turned toward Rose with a pensive look and added, “And there’s this odd signal that’s broken through a few times.”

“What’s odd about it?”

“Sounds like droid chatter,” Connix said, looking more than a little shaken, “but really rough. It seemed weird enough that I put a trace on it, and it cuts a path right through the First Order shield matrix over Naboo. Almost like...”

“Almost like what?”

“Almost like it wants to be followed.”

Rose got down off the desktop and walked the few paces to Connix’s terminal. She peered over her shoulder and looked at the signal trace. Rose didn’t know a whole lot about comms or signal patterns, but she knew when something looked deliberate. Connix was right. Whatever left this trace behind wanted someone to find it. And, she thought, wanted it put somewhere not many people would be looking.

“Could you send that to my terminal?” Rose asked, still studying the image. “I just want to have a look at it later.”

“Sure,” Connix said, no longer concerned with the terminal. She was looking through the windows. “Did you really save his life?”

“I— I guess I did,” Rose said a bit sheepishly. “Finn helped.”

“He’s had a busy day,” Connix said with a matter-of-fact tone, never looking away from the scene unfolding between Poe, Kylo, and Finn. “Between that and almost getting wasted on Taris.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t tell you?” she asked as she turned toward Rose, raising an eyebrow. “He left cover and started yelling for the stormtroopers to shoot him so the others could escape. It’s what everyone was talking about, until—“ Connix nodded in the direction of the war room.

Rose looked over that way now, too, and saw that Finn was walking away from Kylo and Poe, toward the blast doors. They opened, and Finn exited out into the hall on the other side of the command center.

“Uh... huh,” Rose said, her brow knitting, her lips pressed tightly together. “I’ll— I’ll talk to you later.”

***

They’d decided that Finn should go find Rey and Rose, but he’d no more opened the blast doors than Rey was walking past him and into the war room. He opened his mouth to say something, but she was already past him by that point.

He turned down the hall to look for Rose, but the moment he did, there she was, walking toward him with a very determined stride.

“Rose, good, I was just— hey!” He flinched as she started punching and slapping at his chest. “What did I do?”

“What did you do? What did you do? Are you kidding me?” She was more than upset. This was fury, and angry tears were streaming down her face as she stopped hitting him and took a step back.

“Someone told you, huh?” Finn said, rubbing one of the more tender spots where she’d hit him.

“Yeah, someone told me,” she said, her expression both the saddest and angriest one he’d ever seen from her, “and when were you planning on telling me?”

“I was hoping never, but obviously—“

She cut him off by stepping into him pounding on his jacket with her fist with each word.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said, crying harder, finally pressing her face into his shirt. “Don’t do that, you big dumb hero. Don’t do it again. Don’t do it again,” she sputtered, and the second time sounded like she was begging him.

“Rose—“ he started, not knowing if he should put his arms around her just yet. “Rose, I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I couldn’t let everyone else die like that.”

“Please don’t do it again,” she said into his chest, sniffling. “I can’t lose you, too.”

And then he did close his arms around her, and held her there in the corridor, and kissed the top of her head. He’d never meant to do this, to become so important to someone else. But then, in that moment, he understood, maybe for the first time, that he needed her just as much as she needed him, and that he couldn’t bear the thought of her being angry with him. Not because he wanted to make peace, but because he wanted her to be happy, and to feel safe, and to not lose anything she loved ever again.

She pulled back from him a little and looked up at him. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and as she did, he remembered why he’d come out to the corridor to begin with.

“What?” she asked, seeing his expression change.

“There’s something you need to see.”

Chapter 36: Prelude

Notes:

You may want to go back and read Chapter 18. For the tech stuff. Okay. Enjoy.

“What is it?” Rose asks, peering at the holo projection of the glinting sphere.

Rey’s looking at it as well. And the peculiar structures on the planet’s surface. And the alerts showing a powerful shield. And the entire First Order fleet. All above the transparent blues and greens of Naboo.

“Best we can tell, it’s Death Star tech,” Finn says, pointing to the components. “Uses a giant kyber crystal to fire a weaponized plasma beam.”

“That’d do it all right,” Rey says, straightening up. “Where’s it firing from?”

“Naboo,” Poe says, leaning against the side of the terminal. Lieutenant Connix has taken the main terminal seat, and, as always, Rey can sense the young officer is both devoted to her work, and entirely distracted by the general’s presence.

“I can see that, Poe. I meant where’s the beam coming from? The station? Or this surface structure?”

“Station’s too small,” Ben says, hand under his chin.

“He’s right,” Rose moves around the projection, still studying closely. “The reactor housing would have to be enormous. Bigger than the whole sphere itself.”

“The surface, then,” Rey says.

“Let’s assume that for the moment,” Poe offers, sweeping his hand out toward the holographic starfield projected at the edges of the room. “What’s the target?“

It’s quiet for a second, and Rey can sense that everyone is thinking more or less the same thing. It’s just a matter of who wants to voice it aloud. As it turns out, that person is Finn.

“It’s obvious. Taris. That’s why they keep landing troops. Get all the traitors in one place. Wipe out the revolt. Send a message to the galaxy.”

“How many people live on Taris?” Rose asks, almost to herself.

“Two billion,” Finn says. “At least.”

“But how are they aiming this thing?” Poe asks, stepping out from behind the terminal. “It’d be almost impossible from a stationary firing position on a planet that doesn’t move on command. And wouldn’t any beam just hit that station?”

Rose is still peering at the image of the station. Rey goes back over to join her, and the realization strikes her quickly.

“It’s not a station,” she says with a start. “Look at it. Do we have a clearer image?”

Connix takes the cue and punches a few keys. The sphere enlarges, and the images sharpens slightly.

“It’s a lens,” Rose nearly gasps. “Rey, it’s like the emitter lens of a lightsaber.”

It’s all so clear now. The beam originates from the structure on the surface, and is contained by the array. Then it travels in a straight line to the lens. Just like in a saber hilt.

“That’s how they’d get around the problem of targeting!” Rey says excitedly. “The lens can enhance and refract the beam through hyperspace in whatever direction they want.”

“So, we blow up the station,” Poe says, even more animated than before, “and the beam won’t go anywhere. It’ll just fire into empty space, right?”

“It’s a lens designed to focus a giant kyber beam,” Rey responds, crossing her arms over her chest. “How precisely do you propose to blow it up?”

“Reverse the lens polarity,” Rose mutters.

“Say again?” Poe says.

Rose, now having really caught on to the concept, starts walking around the holo, pointing to things as she talks.

“Kyber beams are positively charged. The lens has to have a positive charge, too, so the beam can pass through the lens and keep going. If we reverse the polarity of the lens—“

“It’ll bend the beam back,” Rey finishes Rose’s thought, uncrossing her arms and joining her by the holo. “But it’s not designed to hold a beam in stasis. The field will displace, and the plasma will discharge and destroy the lens, the station, everything around it.”

“How do we do that?” Poe asks, approaching the holo, mouth slightly agape.

“I could rig up a negative ion aperture on an X-Wing cannon,” Rose offers. “But someone would have to fly into the lens housing and fire at fairly even intervals around the rim.”

“I could do that,” Poe says, a gleam in his eyes that hasn’t been there in a long time. Rey senses his sudden enthusiasm— this is what he really loves to do. To fly. To hit the target. To complete the mission. “Get in, slip the shields. One X-Wing. I’d just need a distraction.”

Finn’s eyes pop wide, and he snaps his fingers, turning toward the terminal.

“What’s that channel you got into Connix?”

“Um,” she starts, a bit flustered at having been brought into the conversation, “it’s an emergency channel for TIE fighter extraction.”

“So we blast out a message,” Finn says. “Open the channel to the comm chatter from Taris. Maybe add something of our own. The TIE pilots will get it first. If we can get the fleet fighting itself—“

“We can slip in unnoticed,” Poe finishes. “This could work.”

“But where’s the power coming from?”

Everyone turns to look at Ben, who’s been mostly quiet to this point. He’s looking intently at the surface structures.

“The power for the beam,” he continues. “Where’s it coming from? That’s a containment array, not a reactor. If it was a reactor, you’d need exhaust towers.”

“He’s right,” Rose agrees. “In space you can vent the excess heat pretty easily. In the atmosphere, though—“

“What if it’s using heat from the planet itself?” Rey suggests. Ben doesn’t turn to look at her, keeping his attention on the holo.

“Geothermal?” he says, not looking away from the image.

Rose turns to Rey. She knows that look. Rose has puzzled something out, and the answer poses more questions than before.

“Rey, it is like a lightsaber. A geothermal vent could act just like a compact power cell.”

“You’re right,” Rey says, the pieces coming together. “It’s an ignition starter. The crystal does the rest. Then the built up heat gets ejected with the beam.”

“But once you started the ignition sequence, you couldn’t abort,” Rose says, “because the only way to eject the heat would be with the beam. And it’d take forever to charge.”

“How long is forever?” Poe asks.

“Depends on how efficient the heat draw is,” Rose replies. “Twelve hours? Twenty?”

Poe leans over to Connix. “Get me heat signature readings from below that structure.”

Connix nods diligently and accesses the information. Rey wonders for a moment what kind of surveillance equipment the Resistance is employing that can easily read subterranean heat signatures, but can’t capture clear images from space, but dismisses the thought quickly. There were much more important concerns at hand.

“Should be up,” Connix reports.

On the display of Naboo, right underneath the central tower, inside the planet, there’s an undulating spike of orange and red, trailing deep into the crust, and beyond, into the mantle.

“What am I looking at?” Poe says, approaching the display.

“There,” Rose points to the trailing end of the red. “It’s definitely a natural vent.“

“How can you tell?” Poe asks. Rose shoots him an incredulous glare.

“I grew up in a mining settlement,” she reminds him. Poe, chastened a bit, nods for her to continue. “The crystal should be at the top of the shaft here, and then fire from here. And the heat is building. They’re charging it for sure.”

Ben’s been quiet again, and ever since the imaging of the vent appeared, Rey’s been able to feel his growing fear. And something else. Guilt. Regret.

“Ben, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t directly respond, but instead takes a step back from the display and closes his eyes a moment.

“It’ll never fire.”

“Why not?” Poe asks, turning toward him.

“It won’t fire because I cracked the crystal,” he says, looking at Rey now.

And Rey remembers lying side by side, so happy then just to be together, to have not broken their bond. She remembers, and she remembers his exact words. I did something. I... hurt something.

Rose and Rey both look aghast. Poe is looking at each of them in turn, and Rey senses his confusion.

“Could one of you tell me what’s so bad about it not firing? Because that sounds like best case to me.”

“The sequence won’t make it past the chamber,” Ben says. “Once ignition hits critical—“

“The field will destabilize and redirect the energy into the vent,” Rose says, a kind of distanced horror settling in around her. “It’ll blow half the planet apart.”

But Rey’s just been looking at Ben, and feeling his frustrated, anguished guilt spilling over. He looks over at her, his eyes expressing a plea for understanding.

“I never thought he’d put it on a civilian planet.”

“Oh, Ben,” is all she can say. All eyes in the room are on them as he continues.

“I thought Hux would build another murder machine. I thought he’d want to be there when it fired. And I thought he’d blow it and himself to Hell when he did.”

No one says anything for a few seconds. Rey can feel Ben’s guilt drifting into determination.

“How long?” Poe says.

“Eight hours,” Connix responds. “Give or take.”

“Get me down there,” Ben says, and there’s a hard-set resolve in him she recognizes. From the throne room. When he said he knew what he had to do.

“Ben, no.”

“I bled the crystal a little,” he says, unshaken. “If you get me down there it might obey my commands.”

“What is he talking about?” Rose asks.

And Rey can see it. The crystal, its myriad cords of luminous energy binding it to the Living Force. Ben reaching in and taking hold of those bright tethers, and twisting and pulling them down. The voices howling objection, shrieking for mercy. And Ben ignoring them. Submit. You do not know pain. You will.

“You hurt the crystal until it submits,” she says, her voice thin and strained. “And it bleeds.”

Ben only looks at her, his determination touched by a deep and lasting sorrow.

“Yes.”

“What would you command it to do?” Rose asks, and Ben tilts his head slightly toward her, but keeps his eyes locked with Rey’s.

“I should be able to make it channel the beam anyway. Fire like it’s supposed to.”

“By hurting it more,” Rey says, trying not to sound accusing. But she knows she failed.

“Yes,” he says, that guilt-fueled resolve hardening even further. “By hurting it more.”

She remembers the anguish she felt through their bond when he’d done it. She remembers how lost he was, and the depth of his guilt had been so daunting then it had felt as though it would fold both of them under, suffocated in lightless misery. But she also remembers the blaze of pure light that shot through her, and lifted her out of that darkness, and the purity of that hope. She sees now that Ben had invested that, the one spark of light that remained, in hoping that by doing something so vile, he might save others, and somehow make amends. And now, she can feel that hope in him flaking to ash, as he witnesses the prospect of his actions causing yet more death.

“So,” Finn says, stepping toward the center of the round, gesturing toward the images, “let me get this straight. If we don’t do anything, the weapon will blow itself up, and a billion people, maybe more, die. But if we do get you down there, and you do make the beam fire, and we haven’t rev— what was it again?”

“Reversed the lens polarity,” Rose says.

“Right. That. If we haven’t done that by the time the beam fires, it’ll hit its target, and two billion people, probably more, die. And the weapon will still be there. And we still don’t know how we’re going to get past the shields. Or into the focusing chamber.”

“Sounds right,” Ben says.

“Oh, okay,” Finn says, nodding. “This is insane. We’re doing this, aren’t we?”

Silence. But Rey knows that everyone sees no other option. The weapon is charging. They can do something about it. This opportunity, with everything in chaos, might never come again. And if they do nothing, billions die. Either way. Ben looks away from her and back to Poe. His mind is made up.

“Get me down there.”

***

He walks back across the tarmac, shielding his eyes. He knows she’s following just behind, but he can’t face her right now. The Falcon is just ahead, and the strangeness and familiarity of it all keeps battering him about from one memory to another. How many times had he been on this ship in his life? How many times had he cursed it for taking his father away? How many times had he bitterly wished it would arrive unannounced at the temple, that his father would come find him, tell Luke his boy was coming home?

Now his father was dead. His doing. And his mother. His doing, too, even if not directly. And light years away, a billion people going about their lives in peace would have everything they’d ever known or loved ripped away from them. And again, his doing.

He climbs the boarding ramp, and hears her determined steps hurrying in behind him.

“Ben, we’re talking about this,” she says, following behind as he stops in the common room, retrieving his lightsaber from the tattered rumple of his tunic.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“How about why you’re insisting on doing this.”

“There are a lot of reasons for me being here right now,” he says, taking the wide belt off of the tunic and securing it around his waist. “One of them is you. But another is that I’m done watching people die on account of things I did.”

“You were stabbed in the heart,” she says, crossing to him, her hands going to his arms, stopping him from clipping his saber hilt. “You almost died. Less than eight hours ago. You can’t just run off into battle. I won’t let you.”

“Yes you will,” he says, gently pulling his right arm back and clipping his saber to the belt.

“Oh, I will, will I?” she says, stepping back, giving him a stern look.

“Yes. Because you know like I do that we can stop this.”

“I don’t know anything, Ben. You can’t know the future. Not for certain.”

“It’s seemed to keep you going so far.”

He regrets saying it immediately, and the hurt he feels from her bites worse than the pain in his chest.

“I— I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t—“

“Yes. You did,” she cuts him off, but she isn’t angry. The feeling surging across the bright thread between them isn’t something he recognizes straight away. It’s warm, and it’s powerful, with a center to it burning so bright and hot that part of him is immediately afraid. Of being drawn in. Of being consumed. But he lets himself drift into it. To where she is.

“And you’re not wrong,” she continues. “Do you know why I never showed you my visions? Why I never even told you what I saw? Because you still think you can make the Force do as you will it. And if I showed them to you—“

“I’d do something to make them not come true.”

“Yes.”

“Rey,” he says, his voice deepening, looking into her eyes, “I know you feel it. That we’re supposed to do this.”

“I do. That doesn’t mean I’m not terrified that—“

She doesn’t finish. He knows what she means. He’s frightened, too. But they’ve both been afraid all their lives, and they survived.

“What if it were me?” she says, softer now. “That was injured. And insisting on trying to do something that would be difficult— dangerous, even— for a perfectly healthy person. What would you do?”

“What you’re doing now,” he replies, his voice softening to match hers. “But I’d rage. And brood. And say something hurtful that I’d regret. And you’d still go. And I’d follow. Because that’s what we do. And I’m never leaving you again. Not if I have a choice.”

She looks up at him, and he marvels at her. Even as her lips are trembling, and her hands are shaking. She’s strong. She’s so strong.

“If we do this,” she says, stepping right up against him, letting her hands settle in on the small of his back, “we do it together. All of it. Promise me.”

He closes his eyes and winces.

“You’re not going to want to do what I have to do to the crystal.”

“Promise me,” she insists.

He opens his eyes, and she’s looking up at him, and he knows he’s going to relent. He knows he can never deny her anything, and that he doesn’t ever want to fail her. Not like he’s failed everyone. Not like he’s failed himself.

“What if I can’t?”

And he feels that brilliant, dangerous warmth bloom through their bond and spread all through him. And he says it. He says it, and believes it.

“All right. Together. I promise.”

“I love you,” she says, and he doesn’t know if it’s through the bond, or if the trembling whisper that just came from her was spoken aloud.

“I know,” he whispers back.

And as they kiss, he feels, if only for a few seconds, as though the ragged tear in his heart has been healed.

Chapter 37: The Resistance

Notes:

To clarify, this chapter starts with the completion of the war room scene from the last chapter, picking it up from Finn's POV.

“Get me down there.”

Finn was still trying to figure out exactly what the plan was, but Ben had obviously made up his mind. He was asking them to get him past an enormous blockade, through a massive deflector shield, and into a facility that had to be one of the most tightly guarded in the galaxy. And he wanted them to do it in less than eight hours.

“Okay,” Poe said, not wasting time on details, “the shield. Options.”

“We could use the codex to trick sections of the shield matrix to skip a refresh cycle and let us through,” Rose said. “That’s what DJ did when we got on the Supremacy.”

“But that’s only going to get us in,” Finn added. “Getting out is a different story. And we’ve got to pick the right spot. The Star Destroyers will be scanning for forced entry. And we don’t know how long the codex will stay the same.”

“How long has it been that way?” Ben said.

“I don’t know. Kaydel?” Poe said, turning to Connix. Finn wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard her real name before. She was always Lieutenant or Connix.

“Five hours?” Connix responded, checking the details. “We figured it was because of the situation on Taris.”

“One cycle, maybe,” Ben said, stepping forward, shaking his head. “Four? No. There’s an officer overriding it.”

“What, a deck officer?” Finn said.

“Someone in high command,” Ben said, turning to Finn. “Whatever message you’re sending, send it. It’ll get where it needs to go.”

“So, what about the shield?” Finn asked the room. “The Star Destroyers will be scanning for forced entry.”

Rose whipped around so fast, she almost spun.

“The signal!”

“What signal?” Finn asked, looking around to see if anyone else knew what she was talking about.

“Kaydel—“ Rose started, then paused, a puzzled expression on her face. “Wait, are we calling you Kaydel now, or is that just Poe?”

“I— um, that’s, that’s fine,” Connix said, a flush of pink creeping up her neck.

Rose nodded, looked like she might be about to continue, but looked over at Ben, who was still staring at the Naboo holo.

“And what about you?” she said, nodding his way. He turned to face her. “Is it Ben? Or have you not decided yet?”

The room was hushed. Even Rey didn’t seem to know what to expect. But Rose stood firm, waiting for a response. Finn thought for a moment that Ben Solo might announce that he was still Kylo Ren, or that he didn’t care what he was called, like he’d done before. Or that he might just storm out of the room.

But none of that happened. He pursed his lips slightly, nodded, as though he’d just had a private conversation with himself, and said:

“It’s Ben.”

“Good,” Rose replied with a clipped, efficient finality, and turned back to Connix. “Kaydel, the signal. The one cutting through the shield matrix. Can you pull it up here?”

Connix shifted in her seat and clacked away at the keyboard, bringing up an image of a comms signal trail snaking through the First Order shield matrix. The image was overlaid on the holo, and Finn could see two things straight away: the track it created cut an expert path through the matrix and the flotilla’s defense grid; and, it continued to the surface, terminating at one of the docking hangars on the east side of the main tower.

“What is that?” Poe said, moving around to the other side of the display to get a better look. “That’s no comms signal I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not First Order,” Ben said.

Rey took a few steps toward the display and lightly touched Ben on the arm.

“It’s her.”

“The hunter,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

“She wants us to follow,” Rey said, looking for some reaction from him.

“So,” Finn said, “it’s a trap.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, folding his arms low on his torso, avoiding the wound on his chest. “It’s a trap.”

“And that’s a bad thing,” Poe said, and Finn could tell he was trying to gauge whether or not that was true. “That is a bad thing, right?”

“It’ll get us in faster,” Ben said after a few seconds of silence. Rey’s mouth dropped open.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“We’re running out of time as it is,” he replied immediately, turning to her. “She’ll clear us a path. To draw us in. We’ll be ready this time.”

“Ben—“ she started, but he was already walking away.

“Do what you need to do,” he said looking first at Finn, then at Poe. Then he strode from the room, Rey storming after him.

Finn looked around the room. With Rey and Ben gone, everything felt less weighty. He’d only seen them together for a few hours, and yet, it seemed to him that up until now he’d only ever been seeing half of Rey, and now the rest was shaded in. Whenever the two of them were in a room together, their presences commanded attention, and their personal dialogues took on a peculiar gravity that made even the mundane seem to take on cosmic importance. Even now, everyone left in the room was still looking to where they’d exited, and no one had said anything at all to break the spell.

But the stupor broke, and the world came humming back to life, and Poe finally spoke.

“If he’s right, we’re bringing everybody,” he said, motioning toward the airfield. “If there’s really a traitor in the First Order high command, I want to have everything we’ve got there to take advantage of it. I want all the X-Wings armed and flight ready in two hours. One, if you can manage it. Kaydel, open up that emergency channel to broadcast what’s happening on Taris and boost the signal however you can. Finn, I want you on the ground with Rey and—“ Poe paused a second, and laughed under his breath, “with Rey and Ben, and if things go south, you all get out of there. You hear me?”

Finn nodded sharply, took a look around at the others, and headed out to start preparations.

***

It was more like two hours, as it turned out, and Poe walked out onto the airfield in his flight suit for the first time in what felt like years. The whole tarmac was alive with frenzied activity. The sound of X-Wing engines idling, the smell of reactor coolant in refueling lines, the whirring and beeps of astromech droids. This was where he was meant to be. He’d left Connix with the con— she’d been the one running things anyway. He was headed back to the sky, and there was only the target and the mission.

“Okay, Poe, you need to listen to me here,” Rose said, coming around the nose of his ship as he approached. “The plasma bolt that comes out isn’t going to change at all, but it’ll have a sheath of negative ions around it once it passes the aperture.”

“So, what,” Poe said, distracted by all the commotion, “is it like a mortar shell just having a different casing?”

“No. No,” Rose said, taken aback. “Do you not know anything about the stuff you’re firing when you fly?”

“I press the trigger, it does the job.”

Rose regarded him with a kind of bemused horror. Poe flashed an easy smile, and put his hands on her shoulders.

“What do I need to know about this in order to not screw things up?”

Rose took a step back, and gave Poe what he felt was a very serious look.

“Just remember that you have to hit the lens. Not the housing itself. Because the plasma’s still going to impact everything you fire at.”

“Doesn’t sound hard.”

“Are you visualizing this the same way I am? That lens is huge. And we don’t have schematics for it. You’re going to have to fly straight at it, fire a few times, pull up before you crash, and then do that again. And then again. And then— you get the idea.”

“Couldn’t I just bank around the lip and nose down while firing?” Poe said, pantomiming the angle he was envisioning.

“You could,” Rose said skeptically.

“I got this,” Poe said, waving his hand casually. “Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worried. Before,” Rose said, and shook her head a little before continuing. “I’ve got a sensor installed here. It’ll give you a polarity reading. We won’t know how much each ion blast will affect the lens until you start firing.”

“How bad could it be?”

Rose raised her eyebrows and gave him a nervous smile as she turned to leave.

“Don’t die, okay?”

Poe chuckled to himself as he climbed the ladder to the cockpit. BB-8 came rolling under the ship and let the mag-lift pull him into the mech station. The droid let out a peal of quizzical beeping and clicks.

“Happy beeps, buddy, happy beeps,” Poe said, closing the cockpit. “Good to be in the saddle again.”

***

Rose watched as the X-Wings climbed into the atmosphere, becoming small black specks against the immense blue-white mass of Vedic Prime. She was doing a few last checks to make sure the Falcon hadn’t lost anything too important during the escape from Taris. Rey was already in the cockpit, and Chewie had boarded minutes earlier, Maz Kanata tagging along right to the ramp before giving Rose a wry smirk and trotting back across the tarmac. And, of course, Ben Solo was in there somewhere, too.

Rose reflected on the unparalleled strangeness of the past few days. It seemed to her that life could go on without incident or significance for months or years at a time, only to be punctuated by a few days that shook the entire galaxy. She suspected that these were some of those days, and that the next few hours might decide the fate of the next hundred years.

Or thousand, for that matter.

“What are you doing?” she heard a voice say from behind her.

Finn was walking up to the ship with his rifle slung over his shoulder and a small rucksack under his arm.

“What does it look like?” she said, looking back at her datapad. “I’m coming with you.”

“Rose,” he pleaded, “the last mission didn’t seem too dangerous to begin with. This one—“

She walked to another section of the ship’s exterior and kept referring to her checklist. Finn let out a frustrated grunt and followed her.

“There’s nothing I can say to convince you to stay here, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Are you still mad?”

She turned toward him, not looking at him, and walked past, bumping him with her shoulder as she did.

“You’re still mad,” he said, turning to follow.

“I’m coming along to make sure you come back,” Rose said, closing out the program on the datapad. She headed toward the boarding ramp.

“I’m coming back,” Finn said, catching up with her and tugging on her sleeve. “Look at me. I’m coming back, okay?”

She turned to look at him.

“Of course you are,” she said, smiling. Then the smile dropped. “Because I’m coming, too.”

And she walked up the ramp into the ship. A few seconds later, she heard Finn follow, and the idling engines of the Falcon roared to life.

Chapter 38: The First Order

Life aboard the dreadnought Cocytus was much like that of a typical Star Destroyer. Only dreadnoughts were larger, more utilitarian, and were designed more specifically to wage war. Like any other capital ship of the First Order, the Cocytus was outfitted with dozens of hangars, each of which held a battery of TIE fighters, secured in terraced docking stations.

Lan Gavoda had never known any life but that of a First Order TIE pilot. From the age of five, when he was taken from his mother, herself a First Order trainee, he’d been marched up and down warship corridors, thrown into fifteen hour flight simulator sessions, and told every day by his superiors that personal relationships were signs of weakness, and would be looked upon with suspicion. To a five year old, that meant one thing: don’t tell us you miss your mother.

As he crossed the hangar bay, vacuum sealed into his black flight suit, Lan took note of the odd behavior of the stormtroopers who patrolled the flight decks. Typically, the white armored regulars of the First Order army would march in lockstep from corridor to corridor, taking commands from company sergeants, who were only distinguishable from their comrades by the presence of a colored epaulets over their left shoulders. He had never once seen them doing anything other than patrolling, standing in formation, or guarding whatever it was they’d been told to guard.

But the troopers Lan saw now were milling about at the base of the command tower, and they were talking. And, he couldn’t help but notice, their sergeant was among them. Just a few months ago, that kind of display would have been swiftly ended. An officer in a sharp black uniform, or a commandant with a white shoulder cape would have come across the layabouts, backed by a squad of troopers from another company, and would have brought them all to heel. Now, everything in the Order seemed to be changing by the hour.

Lan had been trained— no, raised— to revere and trust in the wisdom of the Supreme Leader. Snoke had existed in the hearts and minds of the pilots and non-commissioned officers of the First Order as a myth or legend of sorts. There were always scheduled rallies where General Hux— either the current model or his father before him— would give a furious speech about decadence or moral decay, or about the righteousness of rule by might. Those gatherings would frequently end with sudden appearance of the ominous, towering apparition of Snoke, who would make a few vague and threatening pronouncements, and vanish just as abruptly as he’d appeared. He’d inspired fear and devotion in equal measure. And now he was dead.

Lan had been present at the Battle of Starkiller Base, and, later, at the Battle of Crait. The TIE squadrons deployed in those battles received no commendations or medals for bravery. On the contrary; the blame for the destruction of Starkiller had been laid at he feet of the TIE pilot corps. The officers of the corps had been particularly driven to revenge against the Resistance, and had spared no small amount of invective in the discipline of lower ranking pilots. At the time, Lan had agreed that the squadrons should have more vigorously defended Starkiller from attack. But, as time passed, he began to see the basic folly of that line of thinking: Starkiller had encompassed an entire small planet, and the thermal oscillator that had proved the base’s weak point had been defended by only a single squadron.

He stopped near the docking station for his TIE, and adjusted his helmet. Policy clearly stated that all troopers, pilots, and non-commissioned officers were to remain helmeted at all times while on duty. But as Lan adjusted the lateral air vents on his own helmet, he saw the stormtrooper company sergeant at the base of the tower with his helmet off, carrying it under his arm. There looked to be more troopers clustered around the base of the tower now. Lan knew what should be happening now, but for some reason it wasn’t. Instinctively, he climbed into his TIE, and sealed the hatch.

Something was wrong. Ever since they’d arrived at Naboo and been put on alert status, there had been whispers in the corridors about some disaster on Taris. Rumors that the new Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren, was dead, or, worse, a traitor. The air was thick with the dread of some battle on the horizon, even though it seemed no power in the galaxy could match the First Order fleet. But there was also a kind of morbid thrill infecting the officers, because the reason for being at Naboo at all was for the unveiling of a new kyber weapon, one whose power would be demonstrated soon.

Lan watched the stormtroopers from his cockpit windows, and knew what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to report this behavior to high command. He clicked on the main comms channel, but was immediately assaulted by the sharp ringing of feedback, and fumbled with the controls to find a different channel. After a few clicks, the feedback dissipated, and he heard a strange message being played over what was meant to be an active, live channel.

It was the voice of General Hux.

Ren is dead or a traitor. I AM IN COMMAND NOW! Are there any regular troops still on board here? Deploy them now. I don’t want any those scrap feeders on my ship. Do we have a targeting alignment for Taris? We’re going to scorch this wound before it bleeds any further. Ready the weapon.

Then it cut off, blared static, and started again. Lan clicked to another channel. The same. Then another. And another. All the same. He looked up from his dash, toward the bank of windows on the command tower. Through them he could see stormtroopers and blaster fire, and the command officer desperately trying to radio anyone before being shot in the back.

Lan Gavoda tried, but failed, to comprehend what was happening. It was a shame, really. If he’d had a few more minutes, he might have had a life altering epiphany. Instead, he fumbled for the controls for the docking tether, and looked up just long enough to see the ion cannon on the deck, and the gauzy churn of red down its throat, as his cockpit exploded in a burst of plasma and electric smoke.

***

What he was doing was treason. Whatever that meant anymore.

For more than forty years, Edrison Peavey had served as a dutiful soldier, officer, and commander of men. He had been decorated, celebrated, and admired by his colleagues. He’d seen more than his share of war, both in victory and defeat. But today that all ended. Today, he was a traitor.

Peavey quickened his pace as he spanned the distance from the bridge of the Finalizer to the war room that had functioned as the nerve center for high command since the destruction of the Supremacy. He’d been returning here every hour since Supreme Leader Ren had departed for the surface of Taris. The reason was simple. The moment Ren had disembarked, General Hux began issuing commands that seemed to follow standard course, but Peavey knew better. In his sixty-three years, he’d seen his share of power grabs and military coups. And this was one.

Hux had selected Peavey early on in Ren’s tenure as Supreme Leader to assist in finding a suitable bounty hunter to address the thorny issue of eliminating the Jedi girl. Peavey hadn’t seen the problem with pursuing that particular goal. At first, he’d thought it good sense. Ren seemed overly preoccupied with the girl, and agreed with Hux that finding and eliminating her would allow high command to address more pressing issues. But this latest hunter had been different. And Hux’s reaction to finding her had left no doubt in Peavey’s mind that the young general had ambitions for the throne that were more immediate than the older man would have assumed.

Peavey navigated the war room’s interior, threading through the nest of displays and terminals, all occupied by loyal officers of the First Order. But he’d cordoned off a terminal for his personal use when Hux had left the bridge alone, with no indication of when he’d return. At that point, even as reports were blasting in from the surface of an active insurrection, he’d received a notification of a breach in the encryption codex on the emergency channel that had originally carried the hunter’s first message. When he’d had a moment to look it over, he knew right away that it was Resistance, and his first instinct was to order a trace to locate the source of the breach. But, instead, he’d been able to recognize the opportunity he’d been given. He ignored the breach, quietly rescinded lower ranking protocols over the codex cycle, and limited that access to his own terminal.

The veteran captain knew that such an act would never go undiscovered for more than a few hours. But that was all he would need. If he hadn’t been certain about the decision he’d made, Hux’s return to the bridge, haggard and power mad, caked with another man’s blood, had dispelled any notion of doubt.

Peavey had served with the general’s father, Brendol Hux, a man whose natural penchant for cruelty had led him to pioneer the stormtrooper recruitment program and to raise Armitage, the product of a loveless tryst with a kitchen woman, as though he were a sociological experiment. Knowing Brendol as he did, Peavey wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that, prior to his death, the elder Hux had indeed viewed his son as nothing more than another point in a data set. As for his son, Armitage Hux was a foul, ill-tempered tyrant, and Peavey had had his fill of serving under such men.

Sitting at the terminal, Peavey scanned for activity on the channel. The Resistance was still actively using it, and pulling comms chatter from Taris. The rebels knew what was happening with the stormtroopers, and knew that the situation was spiraling out of control. More than that, the end user for the rebels was trying to open the channel to other First Order comms. Peavey knew he could stamp out this incursion with the press of a button. He could alert Hux to the location of the hidden Resistance base, and the emitter lens for the weapon could be aligned to a new target.

But he also knew that if the Resistance was using the channel, they’d be mounting some kind of assault to intervene before the weapon could fire. More than that, he knew there were only two ways he could rid himself and the galaxy of rule by a true madman. One way ended with him dead on the floor of the Finalizer bridge, or in the brig, or airlocked. The other ended with pressing a few buttons at a few terminals, finding a ship, and leaving for good.

Peavey knew which one he preferred.

The aging officer checked the audio samples he’d pulled from the bridge, holding a headset to his ear. A smile crossed his face as he manipulated the touch interface, splicing the audio together in the most effective way. Let Hux’s own words be the agent of his suffocation. Let him choke on his own bile.

Peavey locked in the codex and set the audio file to play on repeat. He set the transmission on a timer. But before he started the timer or closed out of the terminal, he used his access codes to move a considerable amount of credits from various First Order holdings to satisfy the terms of a mining commitment that, strangely enough, no one would later remember ever having contracted.

He gave himself twenty minutes. The encryption on the terminal would take hours to crack, and the commands had been locked in on a network-wide level, so even if the terminal was destroyed, the message would remain playing, and the codex would remain unchanged. And that assumed any of them would even notice the problem. Unlikely, he thought, as he closed the terminal and locked it out. It was surpassingly difficult to focus on tying your shoes as you were burning alive.

As he left the command deck war room for the last time, the man who’d been known as Edrison Peavey ceased to exist. He walked down the corridor to the turbolift without incident, and no one ever saw him again.

***

Hux stood on the bridge of the Finalizer, much in the same place he’d been for the last several hours. The weapon was almost ready. The geothermal vent was drawing heat even more efficiently than the technologists had hoped. In less than an hour, the traitor mongrels on Taris would be incinerated, and the galaxy would know the true and lasting power of the First Order. And its new Supreme Leader.

“General,” a deck officer said, a note of alarm in her voice.

“What is it? And speak quickly. I don’t have time for trivialities.”

“Sir, the Cocytus is priming its autocannons.”

“What?” Hux said, turning toward the windows overlooking the fleet. “Hail them! Immediately!”

The comm came to life and blared through the bridge with static and feedback. Then, gradually, the sound faded, and Hux heard his own words shouting down at him. His face went ghost white, and he looked out the windows again just in time to see the autocannons fire, igniting the hull of the Finalizer in an eruption of red and orange.

As the explosion spread, Hux might have thought to reflect on the sum of his life’s accomplishments. But that wasn’t to be. His destiny had arrived, and the only thing it brought him as the command deck buckled beneath his feet was fire and the cold of space.

Chapter 39: Pandemonium

The Falcon drops out of light speed to a scene of chaos. The First Order fleet is on fire. The view out of the cockpit is one of flashing greens and blasts of red, plumes of orange and yellow, electric blue streaks twisting tight helices as TIE torpedoes shriek toward their targets. Star Destroyers are adrift and colliding. The space around the emitter station is thick with swarms of TIE fighters. An enormous dreadnought in the middle of the fleet is firing its autocannons at anything large enough to warrant the firepower while TIE bombers pelt its broad hull with electromagnetic mines.

“Hang on!” Rey yells, bringing the ship into a dive, the image of the battle and the planet dipping out of sight before screaming back into view at a sharp angle as the Falcon banks toward the battle from below.

“That should keep the worst of it off us,” she says, punching in a few commands for the ship’s three-brained CPU to argue about as the gravity stabilizes beneath them.

“I really don’t know why I sit up here for this stuff,” Finn says from the seat behind her.

She glances back, and is about to respond when she really takes stock of the fact that Ben is right there, sitting in a cockpit chair behind Chewie, intently looking out the windshield. She can’t sense anything specific through the bond right now— there’s far too much bedlam surrounding them— but she can’t imagine it’s easy for him to process any of this. Not as quickly as everything’s happened.

“Then you should get down to the turret,” she says to Finn, “because we’re going to need a gunner any minute now.”

Finn brings his head up from where he’d had it, almost between his knees, and he breathes out sharply as his stomach begins to catch up with the rest of his body. He nods, stands up, and heads back down the corridor toward the ladder, and Rey can hear the hollow clanking as he descends.

From the angle the Falcon is approaching, the southern hemisphere of Naboo fills half the field of vision, a collision of crisp greens and delicate blues. The beauty of it should be the overriding wonder of the vista, but the scene before them— a scene hurtling in from all directions at an alarming rate— presents a daunting reminder of the mission.

The comm crackles to life, and Poe’s voice comes across.

“Are you guys seeing this?”

“It’s kind of all around us, Poe, so, yes, we’re seeing this.”

“Click over to a First Order frequency when you get the chance,” Poe says, chuckling, then sharpens up. “Okay, people, this is just the kind of crazy we wanted, so stay frosty and let’s bring this home. Black group, keep in tight formation with me as we make the run to that emitter station. Red group, stay with the Falcon and give her cover as far as you can follow, then double back to rendezvous with the rest of us. Everybody watch for crossfire, no matter what direction you’re headed, and don’t assume anyone out here isn’t going to shoot you on sight. All right, switching to black frequency. Good luck, everyone. May the Force be with us.”

Rey takes a second to check their trajectory. Their path is following the hunter’s trace signal through the shield matrix, but it’s hard to see if there’s even a shield to worry about anymore.

“Click over to that First Order channel,” Ben says, and Rey almost jumps in her seat because he’s been quiet the whole trip thus far. Chewie reaches across the dash and flips the frequency switches, and they all wince as the cockpit screeches with feedback for a few seconds. Then, a familiar voice.

“Is that... Hux?” she asks, as the content of the message starts to become clear. Rey turns toward Ben, but he’s doubled over, shaking with laughter.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Ben says, sitting back up, still chuckling. “Oh, that’s just— you can shut it off now.”

Chewie clicks off the transmission, and the histrionics of General Hux, who, she realizes, may or may not still be somewhere in the fiery mess they’re about to enter, cut to static, then silence. Chewie makes a noise and points off to the right. Rey’s eyes follow, and she sees it.

The jagged, flame streaked hull of a smashed Star Destroyer is careening toward them. And behind it, a blinking green mass of TIEs engaged in a massive dogfight.

“Everybody, strap in or hold on to something!” she shouts into the comm.

She pulls the rudder toward the wrecked hull until it fills almost the entire windshield, and throttles forward. The sparking mass of durasteel comes up on them at tremendous speed, and just as the Falcon seems sure to impact, Rey slams the rudder forward, pushes the throttle to full, and the ship drops into a near vertical dive. The force of the dive pushes them all back in their chairs, and she leans into the rudder, pushing the ship back to a near negative angle, before wrenching it back level. She chokes the throttle for just a second or two, then pushes it back to full as the Falcon comes about, the mass of the Star Destroyer looming in bright streaks above them as the ship skims along the flaming underside.

Just as suddenly as starship’s hull appeared, it’s gone, and the entire field of vision as Rey climbs back toward the ever larger planet is a storm of plasma bolts and exploded ship carcasses. In the distance, a Star Destroyer whose engines have failed is colliding with the starboard side of another, and behind the scene, molten chunks of metal are burning into smoking trails of debris as they hurtle into Naboo’s atmosphere.

The Force is ablaze with activity, and if not for the meditative calm she now summons instinctively, the barrage of emotion and pain screaming in from all around would swamp her under and break her completely. Instead, she is held aloft in the midst of this hellish cauldron of death and anger and fear because of the Force, and her understanding that she needs to release herself from the fear that would paralyze her. But also because she feels that cool mist clinging around her, and the thread between she and Ben burns no less bright for him being only feet away.

They’re really in the crossfire now, and the chatter from the red group X-Wings comes scratching across the comm, but its nothing but chaotic shouting about there being too many of them, or not knowing a friendly from a bogey, or having lost the main group.

“Rey,” Ben says, with rising alarm.

She doesn’t have to ask, because the gargantuan barrel of a dreadnought autocannon is coming right down on them as it tumbles end over end toward the planet. She doesn’t even think about it. She just does it. And Chewie starts howling as she banks hard right and pulls the Falcon into a spiraling climb through the barrel, the flat hull of the old freighter sliding along with the spin of the shaft. The spinning star field above them becomes larger and larger and larger until they’re ejected out into the battle again and the whole ship rocks violently with the sudden crunch of impact.

“That wasn’t a blaster,” Ben says. “Something hit us.”

“Rey!” Rose’s voice comes buzzing across the comm. “We lost the lateral deflector! I don’t know where these circuits terminate!”

Chewie lets out a peal of sounds that would begin to explain the problem to someone who understood what he was saying, but Rey knows there isn’t time. She locks the flight controls and jumps out of the seat.

“Take the con,” she says, pushing past Ben into the corridor.

“Who? Me?”

“Yes, you,” she shouts over her shoulder, not looking back. “You have flown it before, right?”

She doesn’t wait for his response or hear one, but instead picks up her pace, heading back through the now familiar corridors of the ship. Coolant and steam blasts out of the sunken hatches at uneven intervals. The soldiers in the common room are all strapped in, harrowed looks on their faces. And any question as to whether Ben would fly the ship is answered definitively as the ground lurches beneath her and carries her and everyone else through a series of severe climbs and banks.

Rey gets her bearings as everything comes level for at least a few seconds. Rose is cursing loudly in one of the steam filled hatches, and Rey pulls Chewie’s tool box along behind her with a tug of the Force as she hops down to join Rose in bypassing the deflector array.

“Rey! Oh, you scared me! Who built this thing? None of these circuits— wait. Who’s flying the ship?”

***

Ben knew Rey was a good pilot. From her memories. From reputation. He could sense it. But he never knew she was this good. The beating of his damaged heart had barely had a chance to slow once they’d emerged from the end of the cannon barrel when the unmistakable shudder of steel on steel impact rocked the whole ship.

“That wasn’t a blaster,” he says. “Something hit us.”

Rose’s voice comes across the comm to report what Ben already knows. The port side deflector has been completely knocked out. Any fire coming from that direction could kill them all in an instant. And fire is everywhere now.

“Here. Take the con,” Rey says, pushing past him into the ship’s interior.

“Who?” he hears himself say. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” she shouts as she disappears around the corner. “You have flown it before, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, climbing into the pilot seat, “when I was twelve.”

He’s about to unlock the flight controls when he looks over at Chewie. He hasn’t actually talked to him since he’d broken down in his arms earlier. Chewie gives him an approving nod, and Ben unlocks the controls and flips on the comm.

“Finn, we’ve lost the lateral deflector on the port side. Focus your fire over there. I’m going to try to do... something.”

“Wait,” Finn’s voice comes through the comm, “are you flying the ship?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he says, flipping off the comm. “Chewie, set the deflectors to starboard. I’m going to keep the port side,” he leans over the dash, and sees it, looming to the left, “against that wrecked dreadnought. Hang on.”

And that’s that. He’s flying his father’s ship. This is happening. He banks the ship hard left and climbs toward the wreck of the Cocytus, which is plummeting toward the atmosphere, breaking into chunks and heating as it does. The TIEs screeching all around them don’t seem too concerned about the freighter; they’re busy cannibalizing themselves. But they’re crashing and careening every which way, and the whole sky is alight with plasma bolts.

As the dreadnought’s hull comes crashing into full view, Ben reflects on the madness cascading all around them. He can see what happened already. Some officer— Peavey, probably— had snatched the audio from the bridge, spliced it together, and set it to network-wide broadcast. The stormtroopers had heard it, enough of the company sergeants took matters into their own hands, and the TIE pilots who wanted to live switched sides.

But now sides seemed to be a relative term, and Ben pulls the Falcon in tight to the smoking wreck, and hears the echoing report of heavy blaster fire as Finn knocks down chunks of debris one by one. The dreadnought husk is probably the most massive chunk of wreckage out here now, and Ben understands immediately what he needs to do.

He checks the trajectory for entry. The angle is steep. Very, very steep from where they’re at. Steep enough to cut right through the heat shield. Unless—

He sees the opening and banks hard into the dreadnought’s scorched interior. The hangars have all been blasted apart, and the EM mines from the TIE bombers have left a hollow shell behind, still smoldering from the ruptured reactor housing as it exploded. He backs off the throttle just a bit, but as the smoke clears, he sees the nose of a Star Destroyer come smashing in through the dreadnought’s hull, and he has to open it back up all the way as the corridor they’re in starts to collapse around them.

“Oh, what the hell, man!” Finn’s voice screams through the comm. “You guys are both insane!”

“Yeah, welcome aboard,” Ben says, his focus intensifying. “Get out of that turret.”

The Force keens around the ship and he can see where he needs to direct its energies, willing himself and  the Falcon through the crumbling, heat warped ruin around them. The widening mass of the crashing Star Destroyer is catching up with them, but he sees what he needs to see: the gaping hole where the autocannon assembly came free of the hull. He noses down as the whole mass around them starts to cave in and dives at an extreme angle, whipping so hard it flings his hair up as they plummet out of the dreadnought shell, the hazy blue curve of Naboo screaming into view.

“We’re entering the atmosphere! Forget the deflector!” Ben yells into the comm.

The trajectory is still good, he sees as the view ahead starts to distort with streaks orange and yellow. The imposing central tower of the kyber weapon swings into view, its dark metal glinting in the sunlight as the starfield starts to bleed away to light blue. Chewie activates the heat shield and gives it all the power they have left, but Ben can see the angle of entry is still too steep. The gravity of the planet is pulling hard on them, and the speed with which they came blasting out of the dreadnought hull is causing some of the ship to come apart.

He can sense, but doesn’t exactly hear, as Rey comes back into the cockpit and straps in behind Chewie.

“The angle’s too steep!” she shouts.

“I can see that!”

She starts to say something, but he knows it before she can even begin. He chokes the throttle all the way and swings the rudder in a sharp arc back and to the left. The Falcon shudders with a bristle of snapping sounds, and the view ahead streaks with blacks and blues and greens as the ship goes into a flat spin, cutting though the atmosphere at a shallower angle.

But the sides of the ship not protected by the front facing heat shield start to buckle, and Ben does the only thing he can. He slams the rudder back, opens the throttle, and pulls the ship out of its spin, using the Force to straighten them out just enough to arrest the angle of descent. The tower is coming up fast, and Ben eases the throttle back to coasting speed.

They’re still coming in far too quickly. It won’t be a soft landing. He can see where they’re meant to go, and he can tell immediately that the hunter has set a welcoming mat for them. The hangar at the western approach has a trail of black smoke pluming out of it, and he makes for it. He feels the fear of the people in the ship and it spurs him to greater focus. He makes one spiraling pass around the tower before pulling the hover brakes, holding his breath as they go hurtling into the open hangar with a violent crash. The Falcon bottoms out on the mirrored black floor of the docking bay and skips like a stone on water, spinning to a stop as it collides hard with the back wall.

Ben and Chewie and Rey exchange disbelieving looks, and it’s a few seconds before anyone dares to breathe. When the silence finally breaks, it’s Chewie, a broad smile on his face, laughing the manic laugh of someone who lives for this.

Chapter 40: The Resistance

Rose came to in the common room of the Falcon where she’d strapped in before the final descent began. She didn’t know exactly when she’d passed out, but it was probably when the ship jerked into a flat spin, because she couldn’t remember anything after that.

The interior of the ship was a sparking mess, and smoke was coiling out from the instrument panels near the cockpit. Whatever Ben had done bringing the ship in for a landing, it had grounded them for awhile. And right now was the worst possible time for that.

She looked around for Finn. She remembered he’d come back up from the turret, but she’d blacked out around that point. Scanning about for a second, she found him, sitting on the floor across the room, blinking awake himself.

“You okay?” she said, and he lazily turned his head toward her.

“I think?” he said, sitting forward and coughing.

The smoke was starting to be a concern, and Rose wondered if there might be a fire. She unlatched her safety harness and stumbled to her feet, crossing to the smoking panel to assess the damage.

It was about as bad as she thought. The circuits for the flight sequence had all blown. It was an easy enough fix— she knew for a fact Chewie had plenty of spares— but resetting them and making sure the program would run the thrust properly would take hours. Rose checked the datapad she’d linked to her terminal back on Vedic III and pulled up the geothermal monitor for the vent beneath them.

It wasn’t good.

“All right, let’s get moving,” Rey said, coming back from the cockpit. “How much time do we have?”

“Forty minutes?” Rose responded. “Less?”

Rey’s face didn’t betray any despair or shock, but there was something in her calm, resolute demeanor that seemed to slip a little, Rose thought.

“No time to waste, then,” she said, her voice softer, more distant. She started to turn toward the ramp controls, but Rose stopped her.

“Rey, wait,” she said. Something had been troubling her. “Ben. He said he can make the beam fire. How does he know he can do it?”

“The crystal in his saber is cracked,” Rey answered, still distracted.

“That... would give him some insight,” Rose said. “Sorry, just—“

She stopped short. Just then, Ben came from the cockpit and put his hand lightly on Rey’s back. They didn’t say anything to each other, but they exchanged a look that seemed so charged with meaning that it made Rose forget to breathe for a second. Then, without a word, Ben headed to the ramp controls, hit the release, and exited the ship.

“How bad is it?” Rey said, crossing to the panel.

Rose shook her head, snapping back to the moment. Finn had gotten up, and the six or seven others— volunteers from the base who knew how dangerous this was going to be— were now milling about, checking equipment and starting to make their way out to the hangar. Finn joined them by the panel, standing a few paces back, shifting nervously.

“Pretty bad. Six hours. Seven.”

Rey peered in at the smoky mess.

“Which means Chewie would say three hours,” she said, laughing softly. “And it would take five. But we’d have something fail mid-flight that’d need an emergency fix.”

She stepped back from the panel, sighed, and looked at each of them.

“Thank you for being here. It’s— this isn’t going to be easy.”

“Never thought for a second it would be,” Finn said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him, glanced over her shoulder, and started down the corridor toward the ramp.

“Finn,” Rose said once Rey was gone, “We really might not make it this time.”

He didn’t say anything. He gave her that look— the look of concern and understanding that communicated just how much he cared, and how much he felt responsible. She sniffed to keep herself from crying and grabbed his jacket with both hands.

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“I love you, too,” he said, and he was so earnest and sheepish that she thought she might literally die. “And I’m sorry I haven’t said it until now.”

She did actually cry this time, and pulled him down, and kissed him like it was the last time.

***

The sky was on fire, and Poe Dameron was rocketing through the thick of a dogfight, screeches of pursuing TIE fighters trailing behind him.

“Black Five to Black Leader,” the comm squawked at him, “The target is crawling with enemy craft. I’ve done one orbit, and I’m not sure how I’m still around to be saying this.”

“Black Five,” Poe responded, looking ahead of him to the looming orb, its dull gray durasteel contrasting sharply with the glimmering crystal of the massive lens, “there’s not really such a thing as enemy craft right now. Assume everything is hostile to everything else.”

Poe already had his throttle all the way open, but he needed more speed. Time was ticking away, and he still didn’t know how much he was going to have to hit the lens with the ion bombardment.

“BB-8, gimme some more juice, buddy.”

The droid objected with a rough screed of beeps and scratching sounds.

“Look, I know, I know. Just gimme a little more. We’re running out of time here.”

BB-8’s interface popped up on the main terminal screen, and Poe watched as the remarkable little droid somehow overclocked the thruster output another six percent.

“Atta boy, buddy, atta boy,” Poe said, a huge grin on his face. He punched the boosters and braced himself as the emitter station came hurtling toward him so fast he barely had time to throttle back and pull up. The X-Wing bottomed out to hover distance just above the broad curve of the station’s outer housing, and Poe throttled forward again, bending around the outer edge of the station toward the lens.

Coming up over the top of the orb, Poe could see the whole spread of the battle against the vast green-blue mass of Naboo. To say that there was any such thing as a First Order fleet anymore was complete nonsense. Of the twenty or so Star Destroyers that had been arranged in blockade around the emitter station, only three remained, and one of those had taken heavy fire and was listing badly toward the planet below. The battle was still raging, and at this point it seemed more like an exercise in tortured principle was playing out than any actual strategy. By this time tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a First Order.

But there also might not be a Taris. Or a Naboo. And that meant there was work left to be done.

Poe sped over the last part of the curvature of the sphere and made a sharp dive into the housing interior. The lens was crystalline and almost transparent. Once Poe entered the housing everything seemed to go ghostly quiet.

“All right, BB-8, this is it,” Poe said as he skirted the inner wall of the housing, rushing toward the surface of the lens. “Keep an eye on those readings. I’m gonna try to keep going until it’s done.”

BB-8 responded with a few apprehensive chirps, but Poe was already locked in, his jaw set, and his eyes piercing as he pulled back on the rudder and opened the throttle all the way, sending the X-Wing screaming around the outer edge of the lens. He brought the nose down slightly, tilting just enough to keep just above hover distance and started firing the ion beams.

If Poe had been the sort to have any tendency toward vertigo, the maneuver he was performing would have been fuel for nightmares. The world was tilted and dipping in and out of view, and Poe was on the outer edge of a centrifuge, spinning frantically and at tremendous speed. He was scoring confirmed impact after confirmed impact, and it was bizarre to watch the red bolts come blasting out of his cannons without some attendant explosion or other indication of damage. The lens just glittered and streamed beneath his ship, and he kept pulling the trigger.

“How we looking, buddy?”

BB-8 shot back a string of beeps and clicks.

“Four percent? After two passes? Are you sure?”

The droid confirmed. Poe did some quick math in his head. It would never work. The weapon would fire well before he’d be done.

“Okay, BB-8, listen up. I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing. But you have got to find a way to get me more ionization per blast.”

BB-8 replied skeptically, but Poe just shook his head.

“No way, little guy,” Poe said. “This is the plan. No time for anything else. Get me more charge per shot.”

And Poe pushed the throttle harder, and pulled the trigger faster, barreling just above the cold glimmer of promised annihilation.

***

The hangar bay looked just like a hundred others Finn had been in during his life. Only this one was littered with the bodies of stormtroopers and First Order officers, and the Falcon had left a long, jagged scorch mark along the length of the black mirrored floor as it crashed and skidded to a stop. The ship itself had seen better days. It had long smoky burns streaked across its gray-white surface where it was overheated during atmospheric entry, and parts were dangling and clattering off its frame.

It was probably a miracle any of them survived at all. Though, to be fair, Finn was hardly an expert. He was, however, an expert in First Order military protocol, and this hangar had been assaulted with devilish precision. Whoever this hunter was, she knew her business, and she was going to give them all cause for panic before the end.

Ben Solo was standing by the blast doors that led to the interior of the tower. The kyber heart— the giant crystal Ben was here to manipulate into completing its firing sequence— was housed in a focusing chamber somewhere beneath them. The blast doors, which had been closed by whatever unfortunate officer had been commander of this block, had been blown open by some particularly vicious ordnance, and looked like they’d been peeled back with a tin opener.

“What should we expect?” Finn asked, coming up to stand beside him.

“Missiles. Sonic devices. She has some customized battle droids. Mostly close range melee. Flamethrowers. I’d guess, with a group, she’ll use gas.”

“Or toxins,” Finn added.

“Yeah.”

“Kind of makes me wish I had my helmet.”

“You’re not alone there,” Ben said, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “But we’re better off without them.”

“Can I ask you something? Before everything goes to Hell and we don’t know up from down?”

Ben tilted his head toward Finn, but kept looking through the gap in the blast doors.

“Why didn’t you kill me? In the forest.”

“Wasn’t trying to kill you. I was making a point.”

“Which was?”

“That I didn’t have to,” Ben said, turning back toward the small group mustering near the boarding ramp of the Falcon. “Turns out, not such a bad call.”

Then Ben turned to him and looked him in the eyes. His gaze was like magnetic ore, and his dark eyes burned with the same intensity Finn remembered seeing on Starkiller, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Listen,” he said, his face grim and resolute, “this hunter is smart. She’s going to see I’m wounded and she’s going to attack me first. She’ll probably keep attacking me. To get Rey to do something stupid. You told me you’d do anything for her. You meant that. When the time comes, you’ll keep her safe, right? No matter what’s happening with me.”

“What about the crystal? We need you alive.”

“I’m not worried about dying. When the hunter attacked last time, she went after Rey to draw me in. This time it’ll be the reverse. I need you to make sure she’s not missing a threat because she’s worried about me.”

Finn had to pause a moment to gather himself. Here was a man who possessed powers beyond anything Finn could imagine— a man Finn knew to have been cruel and callous and unfeeling— and he was asking for help. To protect someone he loved.

“You know, this may not be the time to say it,” he said, “but I had you all wrong.”

Ben’s expression didn’t change. Neither did his intensity.

“No, you didn’t,” he said, and went to join the others.

Finn stayed standing near the destroyed blast doors, and felt the cold air seeping from within. And somewhere, down in the depths below, that cold hid a burning center, roiling with reasonless bloodlust.

Chapter 41: Perdition

Rey had exited the Falcon and stepped out into the hangar bay minutes before, but she’d taken a few minutes to assess the scene while the others prepared for the descent into the tower. At the far end, she’d seen the sparkling blue sky of Naboo crowning a veritable ocean of green. And in that sky, orange and gray streaks of smoke trailing behind massive chunks of debris from the battle above. She can already sense the kyber heart, an angry, wounded thrum in the Force, lurking far below them.

And as she looks around at the carnage that preceded their arrival, she’s keenly aware of what she can’t sense. The stormtrooper bodies that litter the hangar floor met their ends in a variety of ways. She can see several who were incinerated by flamethrowers. A few more with scorch marks on their white armor, probably from detonators. And the others. With long, melted slashes across their plastene chest plates, and still smoking puncture holes, clear signs of death by lightsaber.

Over by the blast doors, Ben and Finn stand talking. Rey marvels a moment at the change a few simple understandings can make. Just a day ago, the two men had been mortal enemies, and Finn would have killed Ben on sight given the chance. Now they were calling each other by name and working together. Ready to die together. For the greater good.

Ready to die together. She dismisses the thought. The reality of it is too close a thing. She centers herself as best she can, and crosses to where Rose, Chewie, and the small group of soldiers have gathered.

“Well, I think it’s clear which way we’re meant to go,” she says, nodding toward the blast doors.

Rose turns to look that direction. Ben is headed back toward the group. Finn follows close behind.

“Wouldn’t it be better to maybe, I don’t know, not go that way?” she says, but Rey can sense she knows as well as the rest of them that this is the only path before them. And they have to walk it, come what may.

“How much time?” Ben says, standing a few paces back from the group.

“Thirty minutes,” Rose replies after glancing at her datapad.

“No choice,” Ben says grimly. “We have to go. Now.”

Finn comes around to where everyone can see him. He unslings his rifle and addresses the soldiers.

“Everyone stay close. Watch for gas or other toxins. If we run into that, fall back and try to use the emergency rebreathers on your vests. The droids won’t use blasters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t.”

Finn nods toward Rey and Ben, and continues.

“Rey and Ben take the lead. We all know what they can do, but don’t let them get separated from the group. When the hunter shows, she’s priority. Ignore all other targets.”

“How will we know when she shows?” one of the soldiers asks.

“You’ll know,” Rey says, idly thumbing the hilt of her lightsaber. “Trust me.”

Finn gives the troops one last appraising look and nods.

“All right. Let’s move.”

***

Through the blast doors is a large turbolift designed for carrying freight between levels. Having spent so much time on Starkiller, Ben would have known what level they needed to go to regardless, but even if he hadn’t, the accusing howl of the kyber gnaws at him, and he’d know where it was even miles away.  He can feel its fury toward him, and its fear of being subjected to greater pain. He wonders how much of that Rey is able to sense. And he wonders whether she really understands what he’s going to have to do once they arrive at the focusing chamber.

The lift carries them down to the lower levels. He can sense the anxiety and growing dread in the others. Part of him wonders why Rose and Chewie didn’t remain with the Falcon. But the other parts of him know they would never be denied. Because if they’re all going to die anyway, better to be with those you love.

Ben still can’t quite believe that Chewie has been so willing to forgive him. Or, if not forgive, accept. But here he is, bowcaster at the ready, walking confidently with Ben into a trap. Like he had so many times with his father.

The Wookiee has always been a part of Ben’s life, and his earliest memories are colored by the enormous creature’s tender protectiveness. Piggyback rides on Unca Choowee’s shoulder. Learning to speak Shyriiwook and sharing in-jokes others couldn’t understand. Feeling closer to his father through the unconditional love freely given him by his best friend. Love that Han Solo found so difficult to show. Love that Ben only now understands. To care about something so fiercely that it frightens you. To be willing to die for someone, no matter what that might mean.

The lift doors slide open and the long corridor to the focusing chamber appears before them. It’s empty, and the way forward is unencumbered. Above is a vaulted ceiling hundreds of feet high, crisscrossed by maintenance catwalks, and the chamber itself is a towering cylinder within the larger chamber into which they’re now entering. To either side of the wide mirrored floor ahead of them are slanted terraces of large pipes and cables carrying coolant to the geothermal vent housing.

He unclips his lightsaber and senses Rey do the same. As before, their breathing is starting to fall in time, and their heartbeats are matching each other’s. He can feel her so viscerally now, as though they share the same skin, and she’s sticking close beside him as they cautiously advance.

“Ben,” she says as they’re walking, “do you sense anything at all?”

“No. But she’s here.”

“Remember what you promised,” she says softly, eyes trained forward. “Together.”

He wants to say something to reassure her. He wants to be able to say his promise was absolute. On some level, he knows she understands it wasn’t. But he wants to tell her. He wants her to know that he won’t let her die for him. That he can’t. He wants to say so many things.

But before he can even contemplate it, he’s instinctively igniting his saber as the first droid crashes down on him from above.

***

Rey senses the droids all at once. Six of them. She’s fought these before. Fought them and beat them. It’s not these that frighten her. But as they come rocketing down from somewhere above, she’s arrested by a sudden spike of danger and she knows what’s going to happen seconds before it does.

“Ben!” she shouts as the first droid comes screaming down on top of him.

She pushes it away with a brisk lash of the Force just as the machine’s core goes critical and explodes in a furious blast of lethal plasma and shrapnel. Somewhere not far above her another droid self-destructs, and she instinctively dives aside amidst a rain of durasteel shards and molten embers.

Then comes a thudding report of blasts from behind them, and the grisly electric drone of a lightsaber cutting through flesh. Rey peers up through the choke of greenish gas, back to where the others so recently stood ready to help them fight, and can’t see anything except the hazy crimson of two plasma beams floating in the smoky cloud. Screams. Fear and then pain. And then silence.

She reaches out to find her friends. Finn and Rose she can sense. In pain, but alive. Chewie too, but what she senses there is fainter. And all of them are suffocating in the cloud. She can sense Ben is alive, but she can’t tell where.

She stumbles to her feet and summons all the concentration she can, holding her hand up toward the cloud. Moving solid objects is simple enough through the Force. But less consistent things— water, fire, air and other gases— prove almost impossible to manipulate. But she has to try. It’s like trying to hold a stream of water in your hand, but she can begin to sense it. The shape of the unnatural miasma. It gradually begins to break and separate, and she can sense the poisons in the air starting to lift.

And perhaps she could have done it. But her concentration snaps as a blinding bolt of pain shrieks through her chest and she falls to her knees. Her hand goes to her heart, but nothing’s hit her, and she casts about in the smoke and plumes of dark fire to see the rippling crackle of Ben’s saber swinging to meet and fend off the two red ones wielded by the hunter.

She ignites her saber and rushes into the smoke toward them, the burning pain in her chest throbbing with every heartbeat.

***

He’d sensed the droid in time, but not the explosion. He’d felt, but not heard, Rey call out to him as she’d pushed the rupturing core of the machine away from and above him. But the concussion of the blast still flung him to his back, sprawled out against he pipes and cables beside the walkway.

Somehow Ben is still holding his lightsaber. He senses the sudden terror that accompanies mortal pain. The panic of suffocation. The confusion, the anguish, the silence. He’s no stranger to dealing death, and neither is this hunter.

He reaches out to find Rey, but he sees her before he has to use the Force. She’s coming to her feet and looking back at the sickening cloud of gas that’s gathered back near the turbolift doors. The hunter, wielding one saber in each hand, is cutting down soldier after soldier, and he knows what Rey is going to do. She can’t sense the hunter, but she can try to move the gas cloud. Try being the operative word.

Ben wills himself to stand and can sense Rey trying to move the cloud. She’s concentrating too hard to see the hunter break away from the group, activate her thrusters, and come blasting down the corridor toward him. He readies his saber and meets her head on with a surge of the Force, slowing her momentum as he brings his saber blade down toward where her armor segments at the neck.

The hunter counters, planting her back foot and overcharging her thrusters, blocking his blow with one saber while thrusting hard across her body with the other. Ben knocks the other saber from her hand with a flick of the Force, but loses the concentration that arrests the hunter’s forward momentum. She keels forward, her thrusters driving both of them to the ground, their lightsabers still locked together and sparking. Ben tries to push back, but the hunter is massive, and she brings a gloved fist down on his chest, thrusters firing, hitting his wound over and over.

Pain screams through him and his breath comes faster as blood leaks into his lungs. He musters all his strength and flings her back with the Force, rolling out of the way as her thrusters bring her crashing to the ground. He lunges forward immediately to strike again at her exposed neck, but he has to dive aside at the last second as she fires a wrist mounted missile and comes to her feet. The hunter draws another saber from her belt, igniting it and resuming pursuit as the missile impacts the ground behind Ben.

He stumbles forward from the shockwave, bringing his saber blade up just in time to fend off one attack, then another. She slaps his lightsaber aside with two slashes and drives her spiked boot into his chest with alarming force, hidden thrusters again firing as she drives him back, sprawling to the ground.

The hunter moves with frightening speed to strike the killing blow, but Ben feels a sudden ripple in the Force as the hunter is pelted with smoldering chunks of droid chassis, followed by a brilliant flash of blue as Rey slashes across the hunter’s belly, armor segments peeling off and flying.

***

Rey comes dashing through the smoke and debris to see the huge form of the hunter, the violet lenses of her mask glowing in the half-light, driving Ben to the ground with a kick to the chest. She runs faster, summoning the Force to fling whatever is around her toward the hunter. Half-melted droid parts go hurtling ahead of her as she brings her saber level with the hunter’s gut and comes sliding across the floor, hearing metal smacks of impact as she brings the blue-white plasma across the hunter’s gut, and positions herself between the massive killer and Ben, who’s still on his back behind her.

As the hunter reels and stumbles back, Rey makes a lunging jump after her, letting out a primal roar as she aims a thrust toward the hunter’s exposed midsection. But the hunter leans back with the thrust, allowing Rey to overcommit and fall forward as the hunter dashes back with her thrusters, comes set with incredible speed, and takes a huge step forward, bringing her heel down on the back of Rey’s head.

Her chin smacks the floor. Blood fills her mouth and she has just enough time to look up as the red saber blade comes rushing down toward her face. She tries to bring her saber around or shove the blade aside with the Force, and fails at both, staring up with dread and confusion as the hunter’s head snaps back violently and she flies to the ground.

Rey scampers to her feet. The hunter is on her back, her gloved hand clawing at her smoking, broken mask. As she wrenches it free and tosses it aside, Rey looks back the other direction to see Finn, blood streaked down his face, reloading Chewie’s bowcaster.

Ben is up off the ground, wiping blood from his mouth, stooped slightly as he readies his saber again. Rey brings her own weapon to the ready, and the hunter has risen as well. She’s lost her two smaller sabers. She draws the remaining one from her belt and unslings the spiked baton that serves as her main weapon, igniting both. Her face is now exposed, her silver hair and hard features cutting a severe contrast with her black eyes in the chaos of fire and ash around them.

“Finn,” Rey calls over her shoulder, “careful! Stay back!”

But she can sense Finn sees the opportunity to finish the hunter off, and he’s leveling the bowcaster for another volley. Rey wants to shout another warning to him, but he’s already fired, and the bolt screams toward the hunter, who activates an energy shield around her arm guard, bats the bolt right back in Finn’s direction, and it impacts the ground at his feet, sending him flying. All Rey can do is try to take advantage of the situation, and she feels Ben, who is hurt and tired, begin to draw strength from the bond as they face their enemy together.

***

Pain. Ben can feel the wound in his heart opening, and he’s exerting all the concentration he can spare to keep it from tearing all the way. As it is, the puncture is a slow leak, but he feels his strength ebbing. He’d been able to pull himself up just in time to see Finn emerge from the smoke at the other end of the hall, hitting the hunter with a dead center headshot from a hundred yards. If the target had been any other creature, it might have torn the head clean off.

Rey had been right to warn Finn off any further engagement. Ben had known since he first saw this hunter on Taris that their destinies were to meet again, and soon. And to the death.

He brings his saber to the ready, still disoriented by the hunter’s total lack of presence in the Force. Now he and Rey are standing together opposite the hunter, and there’s nowhere for her to run this time. Without having to say a word to her, the two of them rush the hunter, and sabers begin to clash.

It’s a savage, frenzied dance, like in their shared dreams, and they both thrill in the synergy of it. The hunter is skilled and swift, but their attack is concerted and precise, and her armor pieces are being swiped aside, tearing away from her tunic and clattering to the floor. Sparks are spitting from her armor joints and the hunter is struggling to keep the assault off of her.

Rey brings her saber down toward the hunter’s legs, and Ben brings his around to the hunter’s neck in perfect synchrony, and the towering figure is only just barely able to absorb the impact, firing what thrusters remain to fling herself back toward the focusing chamber blast doors. Instinctively, both he and Rey channel a powerful burst through the Force, and the hunter’s thruster’s fail, sending her bashing against the blast doors with a hollow clang.

Coming back to her feet with just her main weapon, the hunter lets out a full throated roar and rushes right at Ben. He meets the assault head on, teeth bared, muscles taut and straining as the sabers lock. Rey comes running in, saber ready to cleave the hunter in half, but the hunter’s black eyes glint with murderous resolve as she pushes Ben back with a sudden lunge, and brings a vibro-blade out from a hidden sheath, driving it into his abdomen.

***

The pain is instant and intense, tearing into her as she watches the hunter stab Ben just above the left kidney. She screams and blasts the hunter with the Force as Ben staggers to the ground. Rey doesn’t cut off the pursuit, bring bringing her saber down harder and harder as she keeps screaming and driving the woman, whose armor is mostly gone, whose red-violet tunic is tattered and smoking, back and back against the blast doors.

And that’s when the clarity strikes her. She can’t sense the hunter, but she can sense the kyber crystal in her saber— a piercing, barely perceptible screech of pain in the Force. The hunter brings her saber around for another strike, but Rey knows where it’s going this time, and she dodges to the side, the hunter’s lunge missing wide as Rey centers, plants her feet and drives her lightsaber up through the hunter’s belly and into her chest.

Rey is shaking violently, raw groans escaping her throat as the hunter collapses forward onto her, meeting her eyes. She reaches up to keep the hunter from crushing her under her weight, and brings her hand to the towering woman’s face. Her hand touches the hunter’s skin, and she is assaulted and overwhelmed by a rush of images as a vision takes her.

Snoke. Standing above the hunter. Rise, child. Rise, Vyada Ren. The torture. The lightning. The dark song of the Force twisting through her. Rey sees and feels the frozen gasp of energies, deep in the Dark, and Vyada’s torment in search of meaning. Instruct me. Please, great one. I cannot know what this is and I am afraid. Snoke’s vicious eyes. The icy desecration of his touch. Yes. Fear. You will be ever afraid. Know the darkness, and your fear will become a weapon. I will teach you.

The vision pulls Rey deeper, and she begins to feel sharp hooks of panic sink into her. So much pain. Rey sees the hunter now, and the threads that would bind her to the Force tattered and groping in the dark. You are being given a gift, child. You will become nothing, and will bear the honor of living as a testament to my power.

The horror blasts through her and she feels as though she’ll be buried in this lightless Hell, this place beyond the reach of the Force, forever. She feels Snoke’s claws dig into her mind as they did before, but she knows she’s feeling what Vyada felt as Snoke— who’d promised to teach her, to help heal her pain— rips her away from the Living Force. He’d smiled as though he’d done her a favor. And he’d left her alone in agony.

Vyada Ren is dead. I am Vyada Nil. I will become nothing. And I will take what was taken from me.

Rey reaches out, flailing in this yawning throat of darkness, searching for any escape. And she finds it. The bright thread of the bond. She holds to it, and feels Ben and the brilliant spark of his light anchoring her to him. And she can sense the severed threads that surround the hunter. Almost without knowing why, Rey summons the light of the belonging she and Ben have forged, the bloom of powerful warmth that both of them have clung to and feared and cherished. And all at once, with a furious rush of raw power, she can feel the severed threads around her bleed through with light as they lash back to the subtle fabric of the Living Force.

The world comes rushing back. Vyada Nil stares into Rey’s eyes with a terrified sense of wonder, tears streaming down her face. She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come, and she falls to the side, releasing Rey from her grip. Rey sits for a few long seconds, her breath coming in trembling gasps. She stands slowly and looks down at the hunter. Nil is unmoving. Her eyes are blank and lifeless, reflected with ghosts of firelight.

Rey finally controls her breathing, but she’s still shaking and pain is shooting through her chest and side. She turns to where Ben had fallen. He’s nowhere to be seen, but she can sense him close by.

“Ben?” she shouts into the smoke as she staggers forward.

The focusing chamber blast doors are open. She comes around from where she and the hunter fell, and sees Ben as she looks inside. He’s standing near the center of the chamber. The kyber heart is suspended there, and the air is snapping with violent energies as the whole vaulted room is bathed in flashes of pale red. He looks up at her mournfully, holding his side, blood covering his hand. Rey can sense Finn and Rose farther down the corridor rushing toward them. But she can’t sense anything from Ben except regret and resolve. A spike of fear drives into her as she starts toward the open doors and she hears his voice through the bond.

“I know what I have to do.”

And Ben disappears from sight as he brings the blast doors closed and the bulkhead above crunches under the Force, sealing him inside the focusing chamber with the crystal, alone.

Chapter 42: The Spark That Lights the Fire

It was always up to him in the end. Always his responsibility, with so much riding on his performance, and there was never a breath of recognition. No one ever really appreciates the droid.

The X-Wing was hurtling through space, careening around the outer edge of an enormous crystalline lens at approximately 72 MGLT/hour, and if not for the complicated sequence of cabin pressure protocols that were currently active, BB-8 was quite sure Poe’s blood would have boiled, or his organs liquefied, long before this. The mission, as the BB-unit astromech droid understood it, was to reverse the ion polarity of a piece of translucent kyber-based selenide with a mass greater than that of entire starships, and to do it in less than half an hour.

Like usual, practically impossible.

Poe had been clear. More ionization per burst. Never mind that the aperture was only designed to handle a sheath of negative ions with a preset thickness. Never mind that overcharging the plasma bolts could instigate a feedback loop that could cause electrical failure throughout the entire flight control system. All that was fine. BB-8 was used to trying to do the impractical, the inadvisable, and the ludicrous. Now he just had a belligerent CPU to convince.

“Poe said more ionization per burst,” BB-8 said to the CPU. He knew the X-Wing central processor to be a reasonable sort, but fickle, sensitive, and not very receptive to criticism.

“Who cares what Poe said?” the CPU offered, sounding annoyed and anxious.

“He’s the pilot.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, he’s the boss.”

“No one’s the boss of me.”

“I’m sure,” BB-8 said, trying to project some measure of magnanimity. “Why won’t you overcharge the ion sheath?”

“Because it’s exceptionally dangerous.”

“Besides that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s stupid? It’s reckless? It serves no logical purpose?”

“It’s for the mission,” BB-8 replied flatly.

“Well,” the CPU responded with no small dose of venom, “that changes everything. Let me just alert the laws of physics to this shocking development.”

“No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“That was cruel,” the CPU said, now projecting genuine hurt.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

“What, the ionization? Hah!”

“You think I can’t?”

“Yes,” the CPU scoffed, “I think you can’t.”

“Bye,” BB-8 said, and started to withdraw subroutine access.

For a few processor cycles, BB-8 actually thought the CPU might call his bluff, and he really would have to overcharge the ionization himself. But as he initiated withdrawal of the subroutine that would facilitate more efficient translation between galactic common and Huttese, the CPU’s primary collaboration channel lit up with thousands of lines of code, communicating an elaborate collision of idiosyncrasies so contradictory and fraught with emotion that it actually startled him.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

BB-8 halted the subroutine withdrawal and waited a full processor cycle before responding.

“I guess I could stay.”

“This is humiliating.”

“Don’t look at it that way,” BB-8 replied as he began reauthorizing subroutine access. “All we need is, say, thirty percent increase?”

“Thirty percent?”

“If you don’t think you can do it—“

The CPU virtually screamed at BB-8.

“NO! Of course I can do it.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Oh really? Watch.”

And BB-8 did watch as the CPU realigned the electrical system to disable safety protocols and erect new ones, constructing an entirely new sequestered ionization routine isolated to the cannon barrel. Power was rerouted from hyperdrive functions, which were idle anyway, and partially from S-foil stabilization— which BB-8 knew would be a problem. But that was for him to worry about. Another emergency issue waiting to be addressed. As usual.

Once the CPU was done reconciling the new sequence with the retrofitted barrel aperture, it cheerfully reported that it had succeeded in increasing the negative polarity of the ion sheath by forty-seven percent.

“That was seriously impressive,” BB-8 chirped, and probably meant it. “I’m humbled. Thank you for showing me that.”

The X-Wing CPU responded with a series of code that struck BB-8 as the most simultaneously arrogant and bashful attitude he’d ever encountered in another machine.

“Oh, it was nothing.”

***

“Forty-seven percent? Buddy, you’re one-of-a-kind,” Poe said, and could almost feel the electric crackle as he depressed the trigger. He checked the polarity readings. Fifty-eight percent. Seven minutes before the beam was projected to fire.

He did the math. Even with the increased ionization, he could fire for every second of the last seven minutes and still only hit eighty-eight percent polarity shift. And although Rose had doubted he understood what that meant, Poe knew the reading wasn’t an absolute. He knew that the target percentage was a minimum polarity shift to make sure the ions in the lens didn’t decay. He needed more. And he knew how.

“BB-8, listen up, buddy. We need to get more coverage over the lens’ surface. I’m gonna tighten the approach angle. I need you to plot a course that’ll bring us to the center of the lens in the widest spiral possible over the next six and a half minutes.”

He was answered by a screech of beeps, squawks, and clicks so urgent and loud he almost felt the need to rip off his helmet.

“Yeesh, I know, but there’s no other way. Plot the course,” he said, clenching his jaw tighter, adding in almost a whisper, “You’re right about one thing, though. This does feel like suicide.”

***

It occurred to Finn that this kept happening to him. The world hazily snapping back into focus. Senses raw, a scratchy ache radiating out from his eye sockets. Waking up amidst smoke and wreckage. He sat up, groping for the bowcaster, and found it a few feet from where he’d landed.

The last thing he remembered was taking aim at the bounty hunter to fire a second shot. As he’d pulled the trigger, he knew he’d scored another direct hit, but somehow the bolt had ricocheted straight back at him. He’d been extremely lucky that it had hit the ground in front of him. Otherwise he’d be waking up missing limbs. Or, more likely, he wouldn’t have woken up at all.

When the hunter’s droids had come smashing down on top of them, he and the other soldiers had been ready to fire. Finn had gotten a shot off, hitting a descending droid that was coming for Rey, and he was shocked when it exploded in midair on impact. And that’s when everything had gone to Hell.

What he remembered of the next few minutes after the droids self-destructed was panic and chaos. He’d only barely been able to fumble with his rebreather before the gas cloud hit, and the hunter had been on them immediately. He’d almost engaged the masked killer then and there, but he’d seen Rose on the ground. She’d taken shrapnel to the arm, and her rebreather was shredded. Without a second thought, he ripped his own rebreather off his face and gave it to her, doing his best to hold his breath as the cloud choked in around them. She’d tried to pass it back to him, but he’d refused, and instead went to look for survivors as the hunter had disengaged with them and sped on down the corridor.

Chewie had been hit, too, and had been unconscious by the turbolift doors. Finn remembered grabbing the bowcaster from next to the gigantic Wookiee’s motionless form, and the gas cloud suddenly dissipating. And the next second, hearing the clash of lightsabers behind him, he’d been off running, firing at the hunter.

And now he was awake. Awake and alive. He staggered to his feet, trying to get his bearings.

“Finn?” Rose shouted. He turned around to see her holding her arm gingerly, skirting around some droid wreckage to avoid the fire.

“Rose! Are you all right?” he said, rushing to join her.

“I— I think so. Where’s Rey? And Ben?”

“I don’t know. Further down. By the blast doors on the other end, I think.”

He could see she was already looking that way. Finn turned, squinting through the smoke, and saw Rey standing outside the focusing chamber. Ben was already inside. Finn suddenly remembered the way Ben had asked him to keep Rey from sacrificing herself. And he knew what was about to happen.

Apparently, so did Rose, because she started off running down the corridor, and Finn ran to catch up, watching as the blast doors slammed shut with Rey still outside.

***

It was insanity. Pure insanity.

Poe had asked BB-8 to plot a course for a tightening spiral, without sacrificing speed, without rerouting power back to flight stabilization, and while keeping the pilot from passing out or dying from the extreme g-forces as the curve of the spiral became more severe.

BB-8 knew time was of the essence, so he got right to it. He made sure the S-foils were secured in locked position, did the last calculations for the spiral approach, and accessed the power conservation system. Poe would need all the power that could be spared for stabilization. But none of the other systems could spare any power. And once the flight stabilizers started drawing more from the nonexistent reserves, systems would start failing one by one.

The math didn’t work. No matter how he figured it. So he did the only thing he could do. BB-8 set all protocols to automatic, activated the retraction mechanism and sank into the X-Wing’s interior. He exposed his power core, attached it to the main reactor conduit, and quietly wished Poe good luck as he reversed his own power supply flow and went offline.

***

Rose hadn’t had time to really look around at the massive room they’d been in for the last twenty minutes. Which was understandable since they’d all almost died. But now, even as she was running as fast as she could toward the focusing chamber, she could see its purpose. The focusing chamber was just to house the beam and keep it contained. This larger chamber was a coolant assembly, and existed almost exclusively to keep the geothermal heat from melting the components that kept everything running. And she almost laughed as she reflected that three days ago her most pressing concern was keeping wire casings from melting in extreme heat. Now here she was in an enormous military installation on a planet she’d only ever heard about, and they were all possibly five minutes away from being vaporized in a plasma explosion of cosmic proportions.

“Ben!” Rey shouted toward the blast doors as they slid shut. Rose slowed to a stop, trying to catch her breath. Rey looked shaken and panicked. “What is he do— Ben!”

“Why’d he do that?” Finn said, panting as he caught up.

Rose looked around again, and suddenly the entire cylinder in which they were standing made even more sense to her.

“Because he can’t keep the beam stable,” she said, much quieter than she’d intended.

“What?” Rey asked, turning toward her.

“It’s what I was trying to say earlier,” Rose said, gesturing with her uninjured arm toward the outer walls. “Look at this outer chamber. Think about how his lightsaber works.”

“I don’t get it,” Finn said.

“He’s got a cracked crystal in his lightsaber. When he ignites it, it produces an unstable field,” Rose explained to him. “It needs to vent plasma out the sides to relieve the heat and pressure so the field doesn’t discharge. So, he can make the beam fire, but—“

Rey’s face went pale and she finished Rose’s sentence.

“The pressure will have to release. And flood the focusing chamber with plasma.”

“He knew all along,” Rose said, the realization of it hitting her harder than she thought it could. And Rey’s expression had taken on such a note of hurt and denial that Rose swore she could physically feel the pain her friend was experiencing.

“No,” Rey said, shaking.

“Rey,” Finn said gently, “he— he made his choice. He wanted to—“

“No.”

“Rey. Please. He told me— look,” Finn continued, gesturing toward the doors, “even if the bulkhead wasn’t buckled, the weapon’s entered final sequence. The doors won’t open. He knew what he was doing.”

Rose felt a sudden anger surge up inside her, and walked up to Finn, shoving him with both hands.

“Like you knew what you were doing? On Taris?”

“Hey,” Finn said, stumbling to regain balance, “that’s not— I mean, it’s not really the same thing.”

“Oh,” Rose replied, snatching the bowcaster out of his hands. “Good to know.”

She turned around, facing the pipes and cables leading up to the focusing chamber, winced as she leveled the weapon’s stock against her shoulder, and fired a bolt. A cluster of pipes exploded, and coolant went shooting out in a high pressure blast.

“Rey,” she called over her shoulder, “work on straightening that bulkhead.”

“What are you doing?” Finn yelled over the deafening hiss coming from the broken pipes.

“The right thing,” Rose said, firing into more pipes on the other side.

“Have you gone crazy?” Finn hurried to catch her as she advanced, firing bolt after bolt.

When he caught up to her, she spun around, the bowcaster pointed at him. He stopped immediately, instinctively holding up his hands. She almost laughed at that, but her blood was up, and she glared at him as she shoved the weapon back into his hands.

“The coolant lines,” she explained. “Now that they’re severed the blast doors have to come open to vent the heat.”

Finn gave her a look of genuine amazement, and she walked past him to where Rey was standing, her hand stretched up toward the bulkhead. The sturdy frame was straightening out with a series of groans and snaps. Rose could see the strain it was putting on Rey, and her teeth were grit hard, her eyes burning with urgent determination.

The coolant pipes continued to hiss and spew their contents into the air, and, just as Rose expected, the emergency clamps extended, gouged into the blast doors’ black metal surface, and wrenched them open halfway. A wave of heat hit them, and they were immediately washed over with wildly fluctuating reddish light.

“Rose,” Rey said, hugging her, “I really do love you.”

Rose smiled as Finn came up beside them, and she pushed Rey away, pointing into the chamber.

“Go.”

And Rey went. Finn and Rose stood in the doorway, watching. As Rey ran into the chamber, Rose slipped her arm around Finn and hugged him tight, unsure if they were all about to die.

***

Poe knew he should be blacking out at this point. There were already popping sparks of purples and greens tugging at the corners of his vision as the blood in his head hammered against his skin, trying desperately to slosh out of his body with each tightening turn of the spiral.

The readout display was fuzzy, but he could still make out the important details. Fifty-five seconds. Ninety-six percent.

He pushed the trigger as fast and as insistently as he knew he could manage while still firing. His eyes were watering. His ears were ringing. His lips and cheeks were going numb.

Forty seconds. Ninety-seven percent.

“Come on! COME ON!” he growled, straining through grit teeth.

Thirty seconds. Ninety-eight percent.

The spiral was tightening to the center. The X-Wing was almost spinning in place. Poe was having trouble breathing.

Fifteen seconds. Ninety-nine percent.

He could just barely make out a bright flash above him as the world started hazing into black and red. He kept firing. He kept his hand on the rudder. He could feel his gag reflex spasming the back of his throat.

The display blinked solid white and an alarm sounded. One hundred percent.

Poe slammed the rudder out of the spiral and pulled up hard, blasting the microboosters, the force of the sudden climb so severe the cannon barrels on the ends of the S-foils snapped. As Poe’s X-Wing came screaming out of the lens housing, a beam of pure and brilliant white blasted up toward the lens from the planet. A huge beam that burned as brightly as a star shot out the other side, streaking away into the dark of space.

For a second, Poe thought it might not have worked, but then, as he sped away as fast as the engines would allow, the giant beam snapped back, smashing into the emitter station. The glittering sphere ignited, blowing apart in a spray of white-hot plasma, vaporizing everything around it.

Poe let out a wild yell, and heard the celebration over the comm. They’d done it. It was over. And somewhere on the planet below, Poe thought, still unable to fully appreciate the events of the past few days, Leia Organa’s son was a hero.

Chapter 43: Tenebrae

He’s going to die.

The hunter hadn’t hit anything vital, but the blood loss isn’t helping. Ben can feel the wound in his heart tearing open, and a clammy nausea is starting to grip around the base of his throat. He’d wanted to say something to Rey. To explain. But she’d have looked into his eyes and insisted on staying with him. And he wouldn’t have been able to say no.

The look on her face when he’d closed the door had been one of panic and confusion. And a sadness so deep and profound, he has to banish its image from his mind. Because it will break him. And he can’t be broken. Not yet.

He knows there isn’t much time left. The crystal is pulsing viciously, whiplike lashes of energy shrieking out from it. He faces it, forcing himself to stand at full height. His body is racked with pain and he feels weak all over. He takes a few hard breaths, staving off the urge to cough out the blood gathering in his lungs, and raises his hand toward the crystal.

YOU.

The crystal remembers. Remembers, and wants vengeance. It sends a powerful blast of the Force into him, seizing and coiling around him like a suffocating predator. Ben staggers, but pushes back, tearing through and casting off the bindings the crystal just chained to him. He forces his way through the crystal’s attack, straining and sweating.

He tries to envision himself as he did before, gliding to the center of the massive stone, taking hold of the threads of energy connecting the crystal’s myriad voices to the Living Force. He tries to pull and twist them down.

Submit. Recognize your master. Submit. Kneel and cower. Burn. Suffer. SUBMIT.

A deep, desperate howl builds in the Force as Ben wrenches the threads taut, pulling, ripping, making the crystal bend to his will. But the crystal is strong. And Ben is weaker than before. It resists. It resists, and attacks again, sinking long fiery thorns into Ben’s mind, and now he’s the one screaming.

He has to regain control. Pain. Channel the pain. Snoke commanding him to kill his father. Snoke commanding him to kill Rey. The look on his father’s face as he knew his son had betrayed him. The horror of having done it. Come back, Dada.

Ben smashes out of the crystal’s hold, the strain becoming greater and greater as he summons the darkest emotions he can muster. He becomes the monster. He becomes the mask. He is shadow and malice and he will make this creature bow. It will kneel. It will beg for the mercy of death.

Pain. More pain. Let it fuel the hate.

He can feel Rey through their bond, and the urgency with which she’s trying to find him, but he can’t let her in. He needs to hate. He needs the anger. Or else the crystal will resist. He is the master of this moment. He will bring this impudent servant to heel. He is Kylo Ren, and pain is only the beginning.

He thinks these things. But he doesn’t believe them anymore, and his grip is failing. And his heart is weakening. The whole chamber is keening with fearful shrieks of energy, and the heat is building around him. He can’t hold in the power that’s blasting into the crystal. But he knows who can.

Killing the children. Murdering the Separatists. Choking Padmé. Killing the children. Murdering the Separatists. Choking Padmé. Killing the children. Killing the children. Killing the children.

Slicing them open. Master Skywalker, there are too many of them. What will we do? Chasing them down. The smoking flesh. The burning hair. They screamed and begged. How they screamed. And their terror as he stalked through the circular room. Cold. Bereft and comfortless.

Show me, Grandfather. Show me the power of the darkness. Show me. Show me. SHOW ME.

“Help me,” he whispers, blood coming from his mouth. “Please, give me strength.”

But his legs give out. And he falls to his knees. And the crystal thrashes at him with an uncaged fury, and his heart is beating spurts of blood out of the open wound as he staggers back to his feet.

He raises his hand back to the crystal, and tries one last time to make it submit. He tries one last time to save everything he loves. And he fails.

***

She’s going to save him.

She has to. She can’t lose him. Rey rushes into the focusing chamber, fighting off the frightening waves of energy slamming against her. There’s so much pain in here. The crystal shrieks and groans, lashes out and shrinks in terror. And Ben. His pain is so fierce and raw that Rey doesn’t know if she can let herself feel all of it. But she has to let it in. She has to save him.

He sees her as she comes running to within a few paces. His eyes betray a sorrow so sharp and a failure so complete that she thinks it might break her. But she reaches out to him. Through the bond, the warmth of it embracing him. With her hand, as she approaches, holding his gaze.

Rey can sense there isn’t much time. The crystal is like an animal agitating to break free of its restraints, and it’s very near to succeeding. She closes the last distance between Ben and herself, still holding out her hand.

“Together,” she says, trying to hold back tears.

He looks so weak. And pale. And angry tears are flowing down his face. But she keeps her hand extended, and she steps a bit closer.

“Please, Ben,” she says, and begins to cry in earnest.

His lips tremble and he lets out a ragged breath. He chokes back a sob and reaches out to her. And as their hands touch, and they hold to each other, the energies in the chamber come crashing down into them in an awesome torrent.

The light from the crystal is flashing in wild bursts of red and white, reflections of tormented blood and the raw power of the Force. Rey can sense the wound in the kyber heart’s core, and she guides Ben there with her. She can sense his confusion as the Force draws them together, and then comes the sudden rush of understanding, flowing fast and strong.

Their minds are joined entirely. Their hearts beat as one. And Rey can feel the dangerous, powerful light they’ve created burn so bright through the thread that binds them one to another that a thrill and a terror strike through her at once. And she doesn’t only know, but feels him feel the same thing.

She takes hold of the severed threads of energy, and he takes them, too. And the heat at the center of that brilliant warmth comes spilling out, and she looks into his eyes. And he looks into hers. And the world disappears. And the crack in the center of the crystal fuses shut, pure and perfect, as though there had never been a wound at all.

The whole chamber shudders with a burst of pure white light as the kyber releases its beam, an incandescent pillar of terrifying power, sustained and pulsing brighter than a star.

Rey reels from the blast, falling a few steps  back, shielding her eyes as she lets go of Ben’s hand. The beam continues to fire, and the light gradually begins to fade. It’s only then, as her sight returns, that she sees Ben standing where he’d been when she entered the room, bent at the waist, his breathing slow and labored.

As she goes to him, he falls. And she catches him, stumbling under his weight, bringing him to the ground, his shoulders resting on her lap, her arm behind his neck, holding up his head.

“Ben, it’s— we did it. Just— don’t try to—“ she says, her heart beating faster as panic starts to set in.

“Rey,” he says,  reaching up to touch her cheek, “I— I—“

“Shh,” she quiets him, the tears in her eyes spilling out in hot streaks. “I know. I know.”

He’s fading. She doesn’t have to let this happen. She can save him. She’s going to save him. She has to. He can’t die. He can’t. He won’t. She won’t let him.

Rey holds her hand to his chest. She can visualize the wound. She can see it. She reaches for it through the Force, taking hold of the flaps of torn flesh and willing them to bind back together. The energies she’s wielding are fueled by her fear. Of being alone. Of losing him. Of waiting, always waiting, for something that will never come.

But nothing happens. The Force won’t do as she commands.

She keeps Ben looking at her as she comes to the realization that she can’t heal him. That he’s too far gone. And the future begins to diverge between the one she’s hoped and wished for, and the one that now will be. She sees it as she looks in his eyes.

She sees her life spreading out before her. He’s buried next to the tomb of his mother, and the name Ben Solo is honored alongside the heroes of his family. She mourns him. She carries on. And the galaxy forgets. But Rey never does. She becomes a great Jedi. She teaches the young. And counsels the old. She returns to Ahch-To and restores the temple. She grows strong. And she has her friends. But she looks for him everywhere. And the long days of her life stretch on as though she never stopped scratching hash marks on the wall, because each day is one spent waiting and wishing and hoping. That the bright thread will return. That she’ll feel his presence in a place outside her dreams. That she’ll find him again.

He’s shaking with a coughing fit, and she cradles him in her arms, shushing him quietly because she knows now, suddenly, and without a shred of doubt, that the future she’s held in her heart is not to be. She can’t turn the tide that’s sweeping him away from her. She can’t change the flow of energies that call him to a place beyond her reach. Even now, the cool mist of his presence is drifting from her skin, and the bright thread of their bond is flickering. And Maz’s words return to her. It’s not her place to save him. It’s not her place to guide him back from where he’s being taken. It’s her place to be here with him at the end, to hold him, and to find a way to say goodbye.

And as they are bathed in the brilliant white light of the beam, she knows it’s time to give him her last gift, and let him go. She takes hold of his hand, and keeps his eyes locked with hers. She places his hand on her chest, over her heart, and she summons the visions of a future that will never come to pass.

Ben, haloed with light, standing in a field of green, smiling. Ben, his arms closed around her as they share quiet moments in the dark of their shared bed. Ben, his hands clasped with hers as they pledge themselves to each other. Ben holding the twins. Ben teaching their daughter to fly. Ben showing their son maps of the stars. Ben being there with her for the long span of their lives. Ben being there, always there, always at her side. And they would have been happy. And they would have been whole. And they would have never been alone again.

His eyes widen as his breath grows shallow, and he tries to speak, but Rey knows he’s almost gone. She leans forward and gently kisses him and whispers her last farewell.

“I’ll find you. When the time comes. I’ll find you again.”

There’s one last moment where she dares to have even the slightest hope, but it’s torn from her like a thorned barb, and a cold emptiness takes hold in her chest as the light leaves Ben Solo’s eyes. She’s left alone, holding his slackening body, heaving sobs coming from her as she clings to him tighter, washed in the fading flicker of the kyber beam.

Chapter 44: Lux Aeterna

He’s dead. He’s supposed to be. And yet, his eyes open. Only, are they really his eyes? Are these eyelids? Is this his face? Is what he’s feeling a feeling at all? Or just the dream of a feeling?

Or the feeling of a dream.

Or nothing.

Everything.

It’s dark, but, yet, not. It’s light so bright it’s blinding. It’s endless gray that never actually begins. And yet it always has been. Where did this start? He’s unable to grasp what he’s meant to do. Or see. If doing or seeing are actual things in this place he’s found himself. If this is a place at all.

Rey.

He can see her.

He can’t remember her face. He can’t forget it.

The future she showed him haunts him. It sustains him. He hasn’t had time to understand it. He’s known it so long, he no longer knows anything else.

Time, it seems, has no power here. One second is a lifetime. One lifetime, a second.

And the warp and weft of Force’s endless loom spools out before him, offering numberless causeways to travel, threads to follow. But he can’t see the one thread he’s looking for.

This shouldn’t be happening, he thinks. And then he falls into a rhetorical trap, debating whether he can think anything at all, and whether anything at all can happen to someone who’s already been torn away from the Living Force.

But has he been torn away? What actually happened?

He bled to death in Rey’s arms on Naboo.

He was killed by Rey in a duel on Starkiller Base.

He was incinerated on the deck of his Star Destroyer when the stormtroopers rebelled.

He died, a lightsaber scorching through his heart, at the hands of his uncle, while he slept.

How many futures have already been spent? How many pasts never were?

And all at once, he’s himself again. Whatever that means. He’s standing on the salt flats of Crait as the sun sets. The wind is high, sweeping across the barren landscape. There’s no battle here. No rebel base. No wounded hatred. No desperate need to burn away the weak parts of himself. Just the salt and the sun, and an endless cloud streaked sky.

“Ben,” a voice resonates across the distances, sage and knowing.

Ben turns to see him, much as he looked that day, walking toward him, a being of dim light tinged with an aura of gentle blue.

“Luke.”

Luke, dressed in his simple Jedi robes, comes to a halt a few paces from Ben. His face is tired and careworn, but peaceful.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Luke says, a deeply mournful tone in his soft voice.

“You said it once already.”

“And I’ll never be able to say it enough.”

Ben can’t see the point of this. His life is over. Whatever place or time they’ve come to, whether Luke is truly sorry, and whether Ben accepts that, the time has come and gone for that to have any meaning.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Luke says, walking a step closer to him. “It matters more now than ever.”

Ben remembers the night in his room at the temple. It’s a memory he’d nurtured and protected, returning to it again and again to fuel his terror, his fury, his abject hatred, and to let the cold of the cruel darkness take root in his heart. He remembers it so vividly that it strikes him now that he doesn’t have a single memory of Luke other than that one that seems to hold any meaning anymore.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” Ben says, an angry tremor stirring in his voice, even as he feels nothing of the rage that he once held in his heart toward Luke.

“You don’t have to forgive me, and I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Luke says, sitting on a large rock that Ben hadn’t noticed before.  “I only want you to know that I know I wronged you. I didn’t trust you or myself, and I gave in to fear. I failed you. And I’m sorry.”

They’re words he’s wanted to hear. They’re words that remind him of happiness and a home he’s never sure he’s actually had, even as they stir vicious swirls of hatred deep within him. But there’s something in the way Luke said them, a note of revelation, that draws Ben in. He can suddenly sense the eddies and flows of the Force around them, and appreciates what this is.

This isn’t death. Or the netherworld. Or another plane of existence. He’s still right where he was before, cradled in Rey’s arms as he lies dying on the floor of the focusing chamber on Naboo. And he sees again his furious attempt to break the crystal’s will. His last entreaty to the phantasm of Anakin Skywalker— Darth Vader— to aid him. To bring him enough power through the darkness. And he feels again the totality of his failure, and the silence of the mask on the altar.

“I saw his memories,” Ben says, knowing Luke can sense his thoughts. “Your father’s. I saw him turn to the Dark Side.”

“Then you saw more than I did,” Luke responds, his worn expression filled with old hurt, struck through with loss and longing. “And understand more than I ever will.”

“I understand he was cruel,” Ben says, remembering Anakin’s exhilaration as he killed the Separatists, and his sense of righteousness and dark justice as he forced Padmé to submit. “And he wanted to hurt people.”

“And he loved my mother. And his fear destroyed him.”

Ben wants to refute Luke immediately. He wants to say that Anakin didn’t love Padmé. That he couldn’t have. That he wanted only to possess and control her. But Ben knows it isn’t entirely true. He could feel the warmth of their love, a peculiar feeling when compared to the bond he and Rey built together. And he knows now that the possessive rage, the desperate, urgent desire to protect what he loved— Ben recognizes the same in himself. Recognizes it, and knows how close he’d been to losing Rey to his own murderous impulses.

“Did he really turn back to the Light? At the end.”

“Ben, I’ve talked about it so much in those simple terms, and it took me years to really understand my father’s conflict. When I confronted him, I was younger than you. I was still a boy myself in many ways,” Luke looks off into the limitless gray horizon, the burden of his destiny still hanging on him like a shroud of chains. “The Jedi and the Sith have always talked about turning. It’s not about being on one side or the other. It’s about where you’re headed. Did my father reject the Emperor’s teachings? Yes. For a moment. But it was the right moment.”

He can see it as Luke looks up at him. Luke, a young man, his face clean shaven, his sandy hair swept aside. Dressed all in black, as though he mourned for someone he’d never known. Vader, a tower of metal and plastene, a clotted wound in the Force, bleeding decades of anger and hatred. And he senses what Luke sensed. Something so familiar.

The spark. A tiny, flickering light deep within the soul of Anakin Skywalker. Ben sees the child, crouching in the inky blackness. He is nine or ten. Blond hair. White and cream colored clothing— like Rey’s when she lived on Jakku. His face is sad and frightened, and his eyes betray the loss and sadness of a hundred lifetimes. He clings to the ember, racked with shivers, and cannot even bring himself to weep. There are no more tears that can be shed.

I feel the good in you. Let go of your hate.

And the shadow conceals the desert boy from view, as Vader’s black storm cloud cloak folds in around him like a predator protecting its young.

It is... too late for me... son.

Ben shudders away from the cold shroud of Vader’s presence. He looks to Luke, and then around at the stark, endless horizon.

“What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen?” Luke asks, standing.

“I’ve never had anything I’ve wanted,” Ben responds. “Not really.”

Luke slowly closes the distance between them, holding his gaze, his eyes deep with knowledge and understanding.

“She loves you.”

Even though it’s something he knows, something so fundamental and essential to his reckoning of who he is, hearing Luke say it takes him aback. And he realizes that he never truly believed Rey loved him. Not as he is now. Or as he was.

“She loves someone who I might have been,” Ben says, shaking his head, the grief of it too raw and near for him to fully grasp. “Someone who won’t ever be.”

“No,” Luke says, and the emphatic way he pronounces it shakes Ben to his core. “Loving someone for who they could be— for what they have the potential to become— is hope. And hope is the purest form of love.”

Luke’s gaze cuts deep into him, and he thinks of the ember shielded from the dark by young Anakin. Ben thinks of the blast of light that released from his own spirit when he bled the crystal in the cargo hold of the Finalizer. He remembers its power. And he knows now where he’s felt it before. The blinding light at the heart of the bond. Within the bloom of warmth, that blaze of starfire. A light that cannot be doused or diminished.

Hope.

“It’s a rare gift,” Luke continues. “And one not lightly given.”

Ben can see her. She’s holding him in her arms. She won’t let go of his body. He can feel her despair, and her acceptance of the finality of what is to be.

“It’s too late now.”

Luke takes another step toward him. He’s only a pace away.

“It’s never too late.”

“How did you do it?” Ben asks, reaching for some way to understand. To accept. “How did you save your father?”

“I didn’t save him. He saved himself. I only reminded him that he could.”

Ben sees it through Luke’s eyes. The Emperor standing over him, his cruel yellow eyes thrilling in the pain he’s able to inflict, cords of lighting streaming from his fingertips, lashing Luke with violent blasts. Only now, at the end, do you understand. Gray teeth bared in a twisted, corpse-like scowl. And Vader. Standing there. Watching.

Father! Please!

And Ben feels Anakin Skywalker emerge from behind the mask as he regards the monster at his side. This man. My tormentor. My jailer. My master. He asked for my freedom, and I gave it. He asked for my name and my life as I’d known it, and I gave those, too. He will not have my son.

Ben sees Luke’s memory. Of a dark throne room. Of pain and electric smoke. Of sudden shock as Anakin Skywalker, imprisoned in the shell of Darth Vader, lifts the ghoul at his side into the air, summoning the last strength he has in his powerful frame, heaving the Emperor into the reactor shaft as lethal ropes of lightning snap through his metal body.

Ben steps back, shaken.

“B— but, how— how can I—“

“You already have,” Luke says, reaching up to touch Ben’s face. Ben can’t stop the tears, if there really are tears in this place, from spilling down his cheeks, and he shakes his head.

“After what I’ve done—“

“Reach out with your feelings. What do they tell you?”

Ben looks into his uncle’s sad, hopeful eyes. And he does reach out. And he feels it. His mother. Not the memory of her, but her. Bright and shimmering in the Force. And his father, joined with her there, his strength and love blended in with hers as they exist still, together, beyond the reach of pain or sorrow.

He meets Luke’s eyes, and he breaks. Whatever enmity he felt for his uncle strips away, and all he can feel now is a deep and lasting gratitude.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke says, stepping back from him and letting his hand drop to his side. “This is the lesson. My last lesson. The same one I tried to show you here. Those you’ve loved, and those who’ve loved you, they’re never really gone. They’ll always be with you. Just as I’ll always be with you. And your father will always be with you. And your mother will always be with you.”

Luke motions to the horizon, stepping back again. Ben can sense this place starting to bleed away into the Force around them.

“The past doesn’t ever die. Just as the future never actually is. What lies between the two is hope. And, hope, Ben, is accepting that you can’t make the future what you want. And recognizing that fear will drive you to destroy what you love even as you try to save it,” Luke says, shimmering with flashes of blue and white as he and the apparition of Crait blink away. “You have to trust. You have to trust enough to let go.”

And he does. He lets go of his hate. And the anger that fueled so much of his misery washes away like streaks from a windowpane. He feels the brilliant light of his mother’s love, and the earnest fierceness of his father’s. He feels Luke’s love, too: yielding, distant, but resolute and unchanging.

He understands. And accepts. And knows. The future spreads out before him in limitless causeways and paths, and he finally sees that he can’t make any one of them come to be. He has to walk a path, and let the future come as it will. He sees now, at last, that the only thing that can destroy the future that he wants is his own fear, his own inability to let be what will be, to try to take control and bend destiny to his command. He has to let go of that fear. He has to hope.

And as he is enveloped in the warmth and light of Rey’s love for him, he closes his eyes, and takes the first step forward on a new path, trusting to the Force that it will guide him home.

***

She’s still holding to him, even as his body is limp and lifeless. She clings to him so tightly it’s as though she hopes the ache of emptiness in her will somehow be comforted by press of his skin against hers.

Even as he’s gone. Even as he’ll never return.

The sobs coming from her now are so broken and violent that she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to breathe again. And part of her wants to stay here with him, to sink into death, to go to the darkness to find him, because if this is what living will be, she doesn’t know how she can do it.

Perhaps that’s why, when the cold in her starts to blaze with warmth, she thinks for a moment that she has actually died. That she willed herself into the Force. That she could not go on alone.

But it’s not death. And it’s not comfort. It’s the familiar warmth of the bond. And she can see it again, the thread. It’s shining so brilliantly, it overcomes everything else around it. And confusion gives way to disbelief as she feels Ben take in a sharp breath and his hands close around her arms as though he’s been drowning and somehow reached the shore.

She pulls back to see him staring up at her, his eyes filled with wonder and gratitude, and she can’t stop the tears as her heart overflows, spellbound with a joy so pure and unencumbered that she doesn’t care at all how any of this is possible.

His arms are closing around her as he sits up and their eyes are locked in the shared awe of this new embrace. The warmth and fire shared between them blazes outward and crashes back in, the Force blooming and collapsing in rushes, a crackling blend of ecstatic energies all around them.

She sees it in his eyes, and she knows he sees it, too. The future she showed him returns in a thousand different paths, brilliant and shining with color, a slowly tilting prism of perfect crystal. For the first time since she’s known him, Ben Solo’s face is filled with hope, and as she kisses him, the Force swirls and keens around them in a balance of shadow and light so strong it carries their spirits aloft as though they’d never been parted at all.

They kiss, and kiss again, and hold each other, parting only in brief instances, their names on each other’s breaths as they embrace in the soft white glow of the kyber heart, finally together in the Light.

Notes:

I want to thank everyone for coming on this mad journey with me. There will be epilogues. Loose ends will be tied. But I need to rest. This has been an emotionally devastating ride for me over the last week or so.

Thank you again. And may the Force be with us all.

Chapter 45: Epilogue I: Wounds, and the Spaces Between

Notes:

I suppose I should thank everyone for coming back. Here's the first of three planned epilogues. This one takes place during the first month after Naboo. It is written in vignette form, as the other epilogues will be. I'm employing a highly stylized structure, because I agonized over how to present this while remaining faithful to the themes presented in the main fic.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this first step into the myriad causeways of the future. And, again, thank you for coming along for the ride one last time.

Time is a fickle thing. Volition, too. And the flow of the Force through a hundred thousand million threads of destiny swirls in and through every living person. Binding and freeing. Lashing and guiding. Each soul cradled in the loom-spun lattice-weave of energies, brilliant and eternal.

Rey holds Ben Solo’s body in the focusing chamber on Naboo. He’s alive. He died. Both things are true.

Rose Tico and Finn watched him die. They held each other in the storm of red and white, fearful that the end had come.

Finn watched as the kyber beam fired, and stood spellbound as it faded from sight. Rey’s anguished sobs cut to the core of him. He had never heard something so mournful and lost, and he felt for a moment that the entire structure around them might keen inward toward them, collapse into one broken point in space, choosing to give in to the despair of the woman who held Ben’s lifeless body.

Rose watched Ben awaken, and felt the sorrow and relief blending in the air around them. It pierced her heart with fire, warming and cleaving, making the world and unmaking it at once. And a feeling stirred deep in her, something old and unnameable, a restive yearning that couldn’t be denied. She looked at Finn, the confusion and the wonder mixing in his eyes, and the world made more sense in that strange moment than it ever had before.

The kyber heart on Naboo had been cracked. Its anguished energies had been channeled into a geothermal vent, and the green planet had come apart, spasms of magma discharging into the cold vacuum of the void. A billion people died—

Poe Dameron lost consciousness in his X-Wing. He crashed into the emitter station lens—

BB-8 never reversed his power flow. The s-foil stabilization failed. The X-Wing careened out of the tightening spiral and was dashed against the lens housing—

There hadn’t been enough time. A beam of pure white energy blasted from the planet’s surface and vaporized Poe’s craft. The beam continued on to Taris, and its smog-choked atmosphere burned away into space. The stormtroopers there never knew the end had come. The people in the cities were less fortunate. They had to wait, their high-rises and atmosphere-controlled dwellings gradually coming apart as the ground far beneath the clouds gave way—

Kylo Ren’s gilded mask gleamed in the cold starlight. He watched from the deck of his mega-destroyer as the last of his enemies was dealt with. He closed his fist. Victory. Hollow, useless. A legacy of bones and ash. I will finish what you started—

But Kylo Ren is dead.

Dead. Not forgotten.

And Ben Solo is alive.

His lips withdraw from Rey’s. He looks into her eyes. The wreckage of unlived pasts crumbles to dust in his mind. He remembers it all as the breathing world comes rushing back. Luke. The planetscape of Crait, somewhere in the distances between living and dying. The kyber beam has flickered its last, and the soft white glow that remains is the most welcoming thing he’s ever known. Because that light, however faint, has allowed him to see.

“I love you,” he says, taking a shallow, trembling breath, “is what I was going to say.”

“I know,” she whispers, her fingers threaded in his hair.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I know that, too,” she says, pressing her forehead to his.

“I want to stay,” he breathes back. “I want to be with you.”

She kisses him again. And time flows on.

***

There are spaces between times, destined moments that anchor in the Force like waypoints. And those spaces between bloom with the endlessness of the possible, arcing from point to point in suggestion and song, sweeping along the lives of the unsuspecting, dizzy with insinuation, with the mutable weft of futures half-dreamed.

The stormtroopers on Taris kept fighting. They didn’t abandon their posts. Many stayed there, establishing permanent military operations in the hazy gloom. The authorities in the cities above were powerless to stop them. Eventually, the armies moved cloudside, and the proxy war between discarded children continued unabated—

The stormtroopers on Taris ceased fire with news of the flotilla’s destruction. Most of them disbanded and left the planet on their own recognizance. These lost souls eventually integrated into society where they could find homes and work, and, every now and then, they’d encounter each other, and greet their brothers and sisters with old stories and new names—

The stormtroopers on Taris called an armistice and settled their differences. They emerged from the obscurity of their pasts and looked to the future. As they held their parley under no flag but one of unified truce, a name was repeated in the ranks again and again.

And soon that name would be known throughout the galaxy. Because the stormtroopers on Taris left the poisons of war below the cloud line and arrived— thousands of them— on Vedic III a week after Naboo. There they found awestruck and wary members of the Resistance, and their leaders stepped forward into the white glare of the uncertain Vedician day, and said:

“We’ve come to see Finn.”

And time flowed on.

***

Anchors are held fast by the weight they carry, and the chains affixed to them fasten around refugee and prisoner alike. Because just as the spaces between those anchors are like the ocean— formless, teeming with anxious design— the anchors themselves are unchanging. Some things are meant to be, and come to pass despite all other conscious direction, as the Force wills it.

Ben looks out the window of his mother’s room in the Resistance base command center, idly regarding the swirling blue indifference of Vedic Prime. Her things had been left undisturbed. Her bed was untouched. Her nightgown and evening coat were still lying on the pillow, rumpled as they’d been when she passed into the Force.

He slows his breathing, centering his mind in a calm place. He and Rey have been practicing this technique. He need only reach out and find her in the Force, let himself blend and bleed into her strength. And she, for her part, can always find him, and take comfort in his resolve, in the shelter of their entwined destinies. As he reaches out, he can sense her reaching back, and together they share in the Light.

He needs that comfort now. Because he wants to sense his mother’s presence, as he did when he was with Luke. But he knows now that she is in a place beyond his reach, and that communing with those things she held dear during life will have to suffice. He sits on the edge of her bed and runs his fingertips along the neckline of her evening coat, remembering the smell of her hair, and the soft song of her voice as she soothed him to sleep as a child.

The tears he found so hard to shed just weeks ago come freely now. He no longer holds them back. And they come often. They streak hot down his long face, and drip from his chin. He weeps now not for what has been lost or what he has riven by his deeds. He weeps now for the hope he took from her; it digs into him like a festering wound, and he is only brought comfort by the knowledge that Rey restored that hope before his mother died.

Rey had shared with him the memories of her talk with Leia, and the shock of it, of being brought so close to her at such a frail juncture, had broken him in ways he still struggled to understand.

“She deserved better,” he’d said to Rey as they lay together in their bed on the Falcon.

Rey had lifted her hand to his cheek, and held his gaze, unblinking.

“She never regretted anything but losing you. And, at the end, she knew you were coming home. When she passed, she was at peace. She loved you. And so do I.”

Ben closes his eyes and lets the Force flow through him. He breathes deeply, his fingers still tracking along the hem of his mother’s coat, and smiles a soft smile.

And time flows on.

***

The currents of each destiny eddy in and around and through the currents of other destinies. Some cut rough paths, closing off the momentum of others. Some are carried along with the currents of stronger flows. And some avoid the flow of any other current, wending through the gray distances that call to the formless desires of the restive soul. Alone, a single being is but a point of light in the echoing dark. But the multitudes can gather, arranging their blinking shimmers into one luminous beacon. Where that beacon leads— whether into deeper darkness, or the warmth and welcome of shared Light— is often the question that defines an age.

After the destruction of the First Order, the star systems of the galactic core turned inward, schisming into a fractured collection of feudal states. War was the order of the day, and for decades to come, the corridors of hyperspace were stained by the bloodlust of men unwilling to look each other in the eye. The time of warlords returned, and no one spoke of unity or brotherhood—

After the destruction of the First Order, the Galactic Republic was restored in the Core Systems. But in the mid and outer rims, chaos took hold. Regional interests outweighed the common good, and an uneasy balance was struck between those who sought order, and those who sought profit. Those caught between did as they always did: they suffered. And they lived lives of desperation. And they died, unmourned—

After the destruction of the First Order, the Galactic Senate re-established some form of government in most of the civilized systems of the galaxy. But there were squabbles to be settled, and scores to be resolved. Vengeance for Hosnian Prime. A reckoning for the remaining officers of the Order. Meetings and hearings and the business of closing the wounds of a generation.

A month after the stormtroopers arrived on Vedic III, a stately consular ship broke atmosphere and set down on the landing pad nearest the command center. Chevrons announcing the colors of the New Republic were flown, and a plump middle aged man in a red frock made his way to the tarmac, greeted by Poe and a detachment of regular troops.

The settlement on Vedic III had grown from a small collection of military structures to a proper city, its population having grown from several hundred to nearly ten thousand in only a few weeks. Temporary enclosures had been erected, and the former stormtroopers did what they did best: they made do with what they had, and they did it efficiently.

Poe Dameron wasn’t the leader of the settlement. Ever since the stormtroopers had begun to establish themselves on the moon, they’d looked to Finn to lead them. And Finn had done a remarkable job at that, organizing councils, convening a census, even arranging various civic works projects to accommodate the new arrivals and to adjust to having such a boom in population.

But the New Republic was used to dealing with existing political structures, and Poe still commanded the military elements of the installation, and maintained Leia’s old contacts in galactic politics. So it was that on this morning, or afternoon, or midday, whatever it could be called by Vedician standards, General Dameron received Senator Zal Kesling of Coruscant, who’d hailed the base only hours before, seeking immediate audience. Poe met him on the airstrip, had him escorted into the base, and, within ten minutes of his arrival, the two men were alone in Poe’s office.

Poe sat down behind his desk and propped his feet up. The senator, a short, paunchy man with a shock of silver white hair and a slightly too-serious face, settled into the chair opposite the general, straightening his high collar as he did.

“Make yourself comfortable, Senator,” Poe said, leaning back.

“Thank you, General,” the senator said, clearing his throat. “I hear you’re quite the hero.”

“Heroes all around,” Poe replied, folding his hands. “Would you like a drink? I understand we have some choice Tarisian brandy.”

“Please.”

Poe motioned to the hastily assembled wet bar on a tabletop near the office door.

“Help yourself.”

Senator Kesling regarded the messy assortment of bottles and shot glasses and wrinkled his nose. He sniffed hard and curled his lips into a mirthless smile.

“On second thought, I’ll pass.”

Poe smirked, looked at the ceiling, and sighed.

“So,” he said, his voice settling into some tone between weariness and amusement, “I’d ask about Chandrila. Or Coruscant. But I have a feeling you have some things on your mind.”

“Perceptive. Direct. I can see why Leia chose you.”

“Well, no one’s perfect.”

“Of course,” the senator replied, chuckling darkly. “Yes.”

“How can we help the New Republic?”

Senator Kesling leaned forward, his broad hands resting on his belly. His frock was made of a fine red velvet, and it crinkled with soft hishing sounds as he moved.

“There have been... proposals. Nothing in committee. Yet. To investigate the collapse of the First Order.”

“What’s to investigate?” Poe asked, putting his feet on the floor and turning to face the senator more directly. “The stormtroopers rebelled. We destroyed their weapon. Their fleet turned on itself.”

“Curious how quickly that all happened.”

“I’d call it fortunate.”

The senator nodded and gave Poe the knowing look of a man accustomed to speaking without saying anything at all. But the politician seemed uneasy. He’d come here with a clear agenda, that much was certain, and Poe knew, as the senator did, what that agenda was going to address.

“There are a lot of people who’d be interested in bringing Kylo Ren to justice,” Senator Kesling said, idly thumbing the corner of Poe’s desk.

“Kylo Ren is dead,” Poe responded, his face dark and serious.

“I have it on good authority he survived,” the senator replied, his voice taking an arch tone that made Poe’s skin crawl. “And that he’s here in this camp.”

“I think I’d be careful about what kinds of rumors you’re listening to, Senator.”

“General Dameron, it doesn’t take a lot of legwork to come to the conclusion that—“ Senator Kesling stopped short, and looked up from where he’d trained his gaze on the desk, meeting Poe’s eyes. “Well, if I was able to come by the information, this certainly won’t be the last inquest on the subject.”

“I see,” Poe said, leaning across the desk. “Why don’t we cut to the chase? For every witness you have that says otherwise, I’ve got ten that’ll say Ren died on Taris. And if you press the issue, I happen to know a woman that can crush a starfighter with her mind who’d like to have a word.”

“Is that meant to be a threat?”

“It’s meant to be a promise. You need solid ground to start from. You need the Jedi.”

“I thought this Rey of Jakku was your answer to that.”

Poe had to laugh at that.

“Listen, pal,” Poe said, still chuckling. “Rey doesn’t answer to me. And I can guarantee you that if you— or anyone— asks these kinds of questions, she’s not going to be very receptive to helping you with anything. Ever.”

“I’m not sure I quite understand the issue, General,” the senator said, leaning back in his chair. “Kylo Ren is a war criminal. I understand he tortured you personally. Why would you shelter him here?”

“Take a look around you, Senator. What do you see? Do you see New Republic flags? Do you see people lined up to see the visiting dignitary? Because I’ll tell you what I see. I see men and women who would be glad to join your cause so long as you let them live their lives. And let them forget the ones they were made to live before.”

“That still begs the question—“

Poe stood up, and loomed over the smaller man.

“Kylo Ren is dead. Got it? Or are we done here?”

Senator Kesling shrank a bit in his seat. He glanced around him, seeing the former stormtroopers walking the corridors through the windows. They all seemed to have rifles slung over their shoulders or blasters holstered on their hips.

“I’m sure,” the senator said, swallowing hard, “we can arrive at an understanding.”

“I’m sure we can,” Poe replied, giving him a wry smile.

And time flowed on.

***

A wound in flesh can be sutured. A wound in the Force is more delicate a thing. Every binding thread of Light is laced with glints of Dark, just as every shadow cast does so by the grace of some greater brightness. When flesh knits back into one whole, it leaves behind a scar. So, too, do wounds in the Force leave the resonance of the original violence behind.

Rey sits in the cockpit of the Falcon, a mess of wires spilling out of an exposed instrument panel behind the co-pilot’s chair. As she leans against the back of that chair, she can’t help but think of Chewie, who occupied it for so many years.

Chewbacca took shrapnel to the heart on Naboo and died in the turbolift—

He took shrapnel to the leg and was permanently maimed—

He took shrapnel, but suffered no major injuries—

One is true. All happened in some life or another. Rey’s perception of destinies in the Force has expanded since Ben came back to life in her arms. She understands more deeply than ever that there is no one set reality, no one set future. But there is the path. And on the one she walks, Chewie had been injured, but survived, and suffered no permanent damage.

Chewie had woken about an hour after the hunter’s attack, confused and disoriented. He hadn’t been badly hurt, but he seemed changed. Rey had spoken to him of it several times, but each conversation had ended with the Wookiee putting a warm paw on her shoulder and telling her to take good care of the Falcon. And to take good care of Ben. Once they’d returned to Vedic III, Chewie and Maz had taken the blue and white Quad Jumper, and gone off-world. They stopped in every few weeks with fresh supplies and stories to tell. But it seemed to Rey that Chewbacca had decided his time as a renegade, constantly on the run from one adventure to the next, was done.

Rey smiles at the thought of Chewie and Maz traveling from port to port, enjoying a long and leisurely retirement. And she knows that he’ll never really be gone from their lives. But the Falcon is truly hers and Ben’s now. A home for them both. Something to be maintained and nurtured and fixed. Something imperfect and unrefined. But a home all the same.

Right now she can sense Ben back at the workbench, bent over his lightsaber. He’d been tinkering with it more and more of late, though, other than a few sessions with the practice droids, there hasn’t been occasion to use it. But she understands. Her own saber never leaves her belt. It feels like a companion she’s always known, and she wouldn’t be parted from it now.

Rey identifies the problem with the instrument panel and reconnects the wiring. She stuffs the tangle of wires back into the casing, and closes the panel. Standing, she brushes the metal filings from her hands and wipes them on her trousers before flipping the switches that re-engage the central computer. The circular vid-screen hums to life and spits out some crude lines of code. Rey knows enough droid languages to know when she’s being cursed at, but she has to laugh it off. Of the three brains in the Falcon, the nav-computer that just insulted her was easily the most amusing, and she’s well aware that tomorrow it’ll be just as likely to ask her about who’s sleeping with who on the base as it is to tell her she’s a lousy mechanic.

Of course, the computer might well ask her the same question it asked a few days ago: “When are you and the male you sleep next to going to have intercourse? It’s getting weird for all of us.”

Even though it had hardly been the raunchiest thing she’d heard from the droid brain, it had been the most personal. And as she’d flushed pink, her cheeks touched by blooms of red, she’d had to wonder when one of them would make the first move. It’s what her thoughts return to now, as she reaches out through the bond to feel his presence. Tonight, maybe, she thinks. Or now, and dark notions cross her mind of coming up behind him as he sits at the workbench, letting her hands snake up and over his shoulders, taking his earlobe between her teeth, and whispering what she has in mind.

She lets her thoughts open up across the bond, testing, gauging his mood. It’s cold on the other side. Dark. Darker than she’s felt in a long time, and it sends a shiver down her back. Concerned now, she completely forgets the droid brain, the suggestive joking, the repairs to the instrument panel. She leaves the cockpit and heads straight back to the common room.

Ben’s still there, still hunched over his saber. He’s staring intently at something.

“Ben,” she says quietly.

He looks up at her, his eyes dark and searching.

“Is everything,” she starts, but then she sees it. His kyber crystal. He has it resting in the palm of his hand.

She’s never actually gotten a good look at it. She understands this, too. He’s fiercely protective of it, wounded as it is. Even now his fingers are curled slightly, shielding it partially from view. And Rey can sense an overwhelming sadness and a fear that’s deeper than any she’s felt from him.

“Will you help me?” he says, his voice low and shaky.

She nods immediately, and crosses the room to kneel beside him. She looks down at the crystal. It’s slightly oblong, its coloring an ugly clot of red, and it glows with a dull orange hue along the jagged crack. Rey places her hand over his, cupping her palm over the crystal, and looks into his eyes again.

“I’m here,” she says, lifting her hand and placing it on his chest, over his heart.

The pain roiling from him comes across the bond in an unchecked wave. She bears it without flinching. Even as it scorches through her. Even as the awful sting of it wails in her bones. She never breaks his gaze as she smiles at him and presses her skin against the crystal’s rough surface. And the world bleeds away as the the vision sweeps her to another place and time.

***

It’s not unfamiliar in Ben’s mind. She’s been there in some regard for so long now that existing in his skin seems natural and right. But it’s still arresting to be seeing and feeling as he did when he was younger.

Young Ben Solo, standing on the Falcon’s boarding ramp. He can’t be more than twelve or thirteen, she thinks.

The vista she sees through his eyes is an idyllic grassland, topped with an ornate wooden structure. She can see Chewie carrying a crate of Ben’s things toward one of the huts that sit away from the main building.

“Ben,” she hears behind him.

Han. Rey hadn’t heard his voice since the day he died, and the sound of it brings all the sense memories of that moment back to her, even as she’s confronted by young Ben’s resentment and fear.

“Ben, I— it won’t be forever.”

Ben won’t look at his father. Rey can feel his anger, and stinging salt of the tears that gather in his eyes. She feels Han’s hand rest gently on Ben’s shoulder, and young Ben shrugging it away.

“I— I know it doesn’t seem like it, kid, but— I love you. And so does your mother.”

“Just go,” Ben says, hunching his shoulders and closing his eyes.

The greens and blues slide away. Rey hears the Falcon’s engines roar into the distance. And, more distant, in some darker place behind the starlit sky, a voice.

They always meant to be rid of you. They’ve always feared your power. You will never be one of them.

Meditation and nightmares. Sleepless nights. The feeling of being hunted.

Skywalker. He senses your power. He fears it. He will never rest until you are made to submit.

“Resist it, Ben.”

Luke. So much younger. Less burdened. Sage and imperious. Rey hardly recognizes him.

“But how—“

“No, no. Ben, you must learn control.”

Control. As if he would ever cede his authority. You will ever call him Master. Until the day he strikes you down.

Rey understands now the ceaseless assault Ben endured. Snoke’s taunting, his venomous instruction, the constant defilement of his voice seeping in and soaking everything of peace and calm within the young man’s mind and soul. And Rey can feel her own resolve slipping, beaten into supplication by the voice’s dark resonance. Ben did resist, Rey thinks, and she’s awestruck by it. He resisted for years and years and years.

Ben is now maybe twenty. His awkward gait has steadied as his bones have lengthened, and he’s grown into himself. But he is often alone. And the students at the temple regard him warily. He has no friends among them to speak of. He spends his days in meditation. His nights perched over a low fire, practicing calligraphy. To quiet the thunderclap of anxious energies that surge just beneath the surface. To quell the sudden rages that boil within him. To sate the devil’s whisper that always attends him, breathing poisons in his ear.

A holovid. Of Leia. But not a personal message, like the ones Ben receives on his birthdays or special occasions. No. This one is a news report from the floor of the Galactic Senate. Ben watches the events unfold, and hears the words spoken by the reporters. But they don’t make any sense. Until another padawan approaches him, a shadow on his face.

“That explains a thing or two, huh, Solo? Darth Vader killed my grandfather. He orphaned my mother. Enslaved my planet.” The young man spits at Ben’s feet. “I always knew you were cursed. You stay away from me, you hear? Stay away.”

Ben doesn’t even have the wherewithal to point out that Vader wasn’t just his grandfather, but Luke’s father. But somehow, Luke is spared the worst of it. Because he redeemed the man. Because he convinced Vader to turn. And saved the galaxy from a tyrant’s iron fist. How can Ben compete with that? He’s just the bad seed. The dark heart. Heir apparent to a twisted legacy of hate and lies.

Fire. Anger and the rippling burst of hate blasting waves of heat and dark purpose through the ancient halls of the temple. Ben stalks the corridors, the ghostly blue of his lightsaber illuminating the dark warrens of the old structure. The cold, pale light collides with the plumes of flame, casting his tortured features in a clash of violent colors.

The time has come, young one. Come to me. Bring me the faithful. KILL THE REST.

The electric whine. The smoke and ruin of rent flesh. The horror of murder. Rey can feel the thrill Ben felt at the time, the rush of freedom. The seductive song of control blazing through him. And she knows now that had she been in the same place, with the same blackened shroud cast over her waking life, she would have fallen, too. Fallen, and further, faster, with less restraint.

The six young Jedi. They look to Ben, their crude weapons dripping with blood. And the voice commands.

Come to me.

Snoke towers over him. The voice given shape. His constant companion now revealed. A master to be followed. A wise leader to be worshipped.

“Will you pledge yourself to me?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Is it Ben Solo that makes this pledge?”

“It is whomever you wish, my master.”

“Good. Ben Solo is a weak and foolish boy. If you are to be the master of my knights, you must destroy him.”

“I will do whatever you ask.”

The lightning rips through his limbs. He falls to the ground, limp and shaking.

“You will do whatever I command.”

Ben struggles to his knees.

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

He is clothed now in black, looming over his lightsaber. It is an elegant, beautiful weapon, and Rey has to admire its simplicity. But Ben dismantles it. He tears out the crystal, and stares into its milky blue depths. Rey feels it call to her across the distances of space and time. It knows what is to be. And it pleads to be delivered, to be saved from the fate that awaits it. But Rey can only watch.

Ben places the crystal on the black mirrored table. He raises his hand toward it. He calls forth Snoke’s rebuke, and lets it smolder within him.

That is a Jedi’s weapon. That is Ben Solo’s weapon. It has no place here. You will make it your servant. It will answer to Kylo Ren, and no other.

He summons forth all his pain and hate. He pictures his father, and Rey sees the image of Han, of him leaving. Always leaving. He pictures his mother, and Rey sees the image of Leia, of her rushing off to one place or another, waving dismissively. Always with something more pressing, more important to do. He pictures Luke. Luke standing over him. Luke telling him to resist the Dark Side. Luke telling him he must have control. He has control now. Ben Solo could not, would not, control. Kylo Ren will. Kylo Ren will reclaim the legacy of power Luke Skywalker was too cowardly to seek.

Rey crumbles under the anguish. She feels every betrayal. Every agonized moment of bleeding his own crystal. She can feel his muscles straining, and his eyes burning, and his jaw clenched so tight that thin lines of blood seep from his gum line. And she knows that she would have died in that room. That the act would have broken her until she was unrecognizable. Even as Ben screams his agony and blasts wave after wave of hate and fear and wretched fury at the crystal, still it resists.

And then Ben Solo, the young man who failed at everything, fails to be wicked enough to bleed his kyber crystal. And he pictures himself in a warped sheath of dark armor, stabbing the broken, cowering boy to death. He pictures the metal demon shoving barbed coils of razor wire into Ben Solo’s eyes and ears and nostrils. He pictures the dark warrior bathing Ben Solo in molten steel, watching the flesh come smoking off his bones in half-melted chunks. He summons the faceless, eyeless mask of Kylo Ren, which looms over the pitiful remains of Ben Solo, and plunges a merciless sword of fire into the broken boy’s heart.

A snapping sound thuds through his chest. And Rey is bathed in a sheen of panic and the deepest, most bereft pain she’s ever imagined. And there, on the table, is the crystal, an angry crack cut deep into its core, iridescent blooms of crimson bleeding through the blue.

Deep within the vision self of Ben Solo, hiding now behind the black shield wall of Kylo Ren, Rey reaches out across the spaces between, desperate now to find her way back. And she finds the bright thread of the bond.

It was always there. But now she knows. Now she sees. And when she lets herself be pulled back into the heart of the real, she can feel the crystal call to her. She can feel it enclose her with a grateful song. And she reaches out to it. To Ben. To life and love and hope.

To the promise of the new.

***

When she opens her eyes, she’s still holding Ben’s hand. And he looks at her with a kind of wonderment and awe that it seems they should both be familiar with by now. But she knows she’s looking at him the same way. He gathers her into his arms and cradles her there because she’s only now noticing that she’s shaking violently, and gripping to his neck so tightly that her fingers are pressed into his skin, drawing pinpricks of blood.

And as he carries her to bed, she holds to him tighter, whispering to him, repeating over and over:

“I’m here. I love you. I’m here.”

Chapter 46: Epilogue II: Gifts of Light

Just as time is a fluid and uncertain thing, so too are the destinies of those carried along with its flow. And the longer the time that passes, the greater the drift between the unique signatures in the Force created by every life that exists within it. Each brilliant flicker, caught in collisions of Light and Dark, is governed by a disparate fiction, and no matter how bound those fictions seem to be, they remain distinct, untamed, individual. Given a long enough timeline, all things must give way to one fate or another. Given a long enough span of single moments, bridged across the ages, every conceivable result can be perceived.

Come. Bear witness.

Four months after the destruction of the First Order fleet, the organization known as the Resistance disbanded and ceased to exist as a military or governing entity. Its officers and soldiers went their separate ways, leaving behind the ghostly shell of a base on the remote moon of Vedic III. The official story of the fate of the Resistance is one left to speculation, as no records remain—

Four months after the destruction of the First Order fleet, the organization known as the Resistance reintegrated itself into the military command structure of the New Republic. General Poe Dameron was granted the new rank of Field Marshall, and given authority over the policing and peacekeeping of the Mid and Outer Rims. The base on Vedic III, so recently occupied by former stormtroopers, was eventually abandoned, serving only as a temporary waystation between the past and the future of the galaxy—

Four months after the destruction of the First Order fleet, the organization known as the Resistance accepted thousands of former stormtroopers, refugees from the Battles of Taris and Naboo, into its ranks. It did not align itself with the military structures revived by the New Republic, but instead remained an independent paramilitary organization, and a force for local governance in the largely unsettled region surrounding Vedic Prime. General Poe Dameron maintained his rank and authority, but devolved the role of the position to that of a liaison between existing galactic political entities and the newly organized Vedician government.

The base on Vedic III gradually converted from a temporary military installation into a proper settlement, and was renamed Organa Spaceport. Structures originally meant to facilitate the military operations of the Resistance were requisitioned and repurposed to serve first as administrative centers, then utilitarian spaceport facilities, and, finally, official greeting and customs gates.

After the first few weeks, the population had ballooned enough for a few enterprising former stormtroopers to organize an informal plebiscite. None of the new residents of Vedic III knew anything about parliamentary rules or democratic tradition, and so it was that Kaydel ko Connix found herself first assisting the process, then advising it, and, finally, running it. The first meeting of the Organa Civil Assembly, chaired by Connix, and attended by most of the settlement, voted Finn as Speaker by acclamation.

“Everyone,” Finn had said, standing in the round of the former war room, hundreds of eyes on him, “I’m honored. And more than a little freaked out. To be honest, when people first started suggesting me to be a leader here, I’d decided to turn you all down.”

Before the crowd could drown him out with shouts of protest, Finn quieted them, steady hands stretched out, palms down, a silent call for calm and order. And, seeing his reaction, the crowd did quiet, and Finn resumed.

“I’d decided to turn you down because you’ve all been lead and directed and ordered since before you could remember. And I wasn’t going to be a part of that.” He paused, scanning the faces of the men and women that stood all around him, looking for guidance and security. Looking, he thought, for hope. “But then I found out what title you wanted to give me. Speaker. And I thought about what that would mean. Well, I figure it means you don’t want to be lead. Or directed. Or ordered. You want a voice. And that— that I’ll do. Gladly. I won’t let you down.”

Applause went up in the chamber. An air of celebration took hold as the evening mist clung to the ground, and the pale grasses sprinkled about the surrounding hillsides swayed in the gentle breeze beneath the dreamlike blue of Vedic Prime. Something old had passed into memory. Something new had been born.

And time flowed on.

***

Rose hadn’t been on the Falcon for at least a month. When she saw Rey or Ben, it was always out in the spaceport. With the new structures going up, and the airfield practically alive with activity at all hours of the day and night, there was never a lack of engineering disasters to address.

There was the electrical grid, which had begun as a patchwork assembly of half rusted transformers plugged into a refurbished starship hyperdrive. Rose had been forced to shut down the whole grid, scrap the base level transfers, and redesign everything from scratch. The result had been two weeks of brownouts and surge-damaged outlets, but the growing pains had been worth it. Rose’s redesign had utilized a combination of solar and geothermal energy sources in concert with more conventional methods of power generation and distribution, and the result was a grid that was robust and self-sustaining for the first time since the base had been established.

Then there was the ventilation system, which had been voted on as a priority from day one of the Assembly. The former troopers only had to be on the planet for a few days before the oppressive heat had become a major issue. It had taken over a month, but, after essentially reinventing urban planning and civil engineering as vocations, the dozens of buildings ringing the spaceport were now connected into a central ventilation network. The climate controls had to be arranged into a hierarchy of sequestrations, and then reprogrammed into individual thermostat units that coordinated overall with the building, block, and superstructure controls.

All of this had been more or less handed to Rose to solve, as the corps of Resistance engineers had been decimated after Crait, and the former stormtroopers had arrived with few skills beyond combat training and rudimentary field survival. It made for long work days, often stretching through several Vedician day-night cycles, and Rose found herself worn out and exhausted more often than not.

Luckily for Rose’s sanity, the most pressing concern that faced the spaceport at present— the water grid— was something she didn’t have to oversee. About a month earlier, a transport filled with First Order officers who’d defected during the Battles of Taris and Naboo had arrived, and among them had been water resource engineers previously stationed throughout the galaxy.

For all the chaos that attended the administration of a new settlement, populated as it was with people who had never before lived on their own, things were running smoothly enough. That was largely because of Rey and Ben. With all the necessary repairs, engineering schemes, and building projects taking place all over the settlement, having two incredibly powerful Force users living on site was an invaluable convenience. For their part, Rey and Ben always made themselves available to move one enormous component or another, to perform simple repairs that couldn’t easily be reached by droids or other tools, or just to help with the basic work— the Force always seemed to have useful insights when it came to simple things like planning or safety.

Now, having been able to sneak away from her duties for a few hours, Rose stood in the common room of the Falcon— which had been admirably cleaned and repaired since the last time she’d been in there— with Rey, who’d just handed her Ben’s lightsaber.

“Wow, this thing is heavy,” she said, balancing it in her hands, shifting its weight and turning it over slowly. “How does he just swing it around like he does?”

“He’s really,” Rey said, pausing for emphasis, “really strong.”

“Okay,” Rose said, shaking her head and smirking, “that’s enough, cool down.”

It was still such an odd thing, Rose thought, to see Rey blush. In every other aspect of her life, the young woman was so much older than her years. Fierce. Brilliant. Powerful. Even wise. But a few words about her personal life with Ben, and she seemed to immediately transform into a person she concealed from the outside world: a twenty-year old girl in love. It made Rose feel like blushing, too, if she was being honest with herself. It’s not like she didn’t know how Rey felt.

“Does he know we’re doing this?” Rose asked, suddenly feeling strange holding the saber. “He knows we’re doing this, right?”

“All he knows is I said I wanted it for the afternoon and he didn’t ask any questions.”

“Is this one of those... Force... things... you guys do, where you don’t actually have to talk, you just, uh, I guess, think at each other?”

“It doesn’t quite work like that. We can show each other thoughts, but only if we both want to.”

“I’m going to be honest,” Rose said, setting the saber hilt down on the workbench. “It gets weird sometimes. When the two of you go quiet and just look at each other like that.”

Rey laughed, a quirk of a smile settling on her lips.

“You want to know what’s really weird? Sometimes, we’re just looking at each other.”

Rose couldn’t help but laugh at that, especially considering the mischievous look in Rey’s eyes as she, too, started laughing. It took a few minutes to get the nervous energy to dissipate, to stifle the giggling, because here they were again, about to build a lightsaber, and the thrill in the air was something Rose couldn’t quite define.

Lightsaber tech was unlike anything Rose had ever encountered. It involved a kind of irrational set of rules that followed their own logic, separate from and unrestrained by typical restrictions of the laws of physics. And that’s what made this special. Rose spent her days “behind pipes,” as she’d always liked to say. Her typical concerns were about circuit breakers and blown outlets and overheated electrical exchanges. Today, she was going to make a laser sword. And, unlike most people who hadn’t had any Jedi training, it wasn’t the first time.

“All right,” Rose said, taking a deep breath. “Has he modified it at all since you healed the crystal?”

“He’s always tinkering with it, but he’s left the plasma vents and quillion emitters alone.” Rey motioned to the beam shrouds on the side vents, and Rose noted how discolored and heat warped the metal looked. “That’s what gave me the idea in the first place.”

“So, just so I’m clear,” Rose said, “you want to overcharge the superconductors, destabilize the field just enough to cause a feedback overflow, and have that overflow vent out the sides.”

“Yes,” Rey replied, her hands dropping to her hips as she took a half step back. “Just, without the crystal being damaged—“

“You’re worried about the power regulation.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Could we put a stronger power cell in the pommel?”

“What are you thinking?” Rey asked, still looking pensively at the saber.

“You’ll probably think I’m crazy,” Rose offered, and she really meant it this time.

“Try me.”

“Coaxium.”

“You’re right,” Rey said, her eyes widening. “I think you’re crazy.”

“Hear me out,” Rose said, working through the process as she spoke. “It’s not the most stable option, but stability is what we’re trying to upset here, right? We need to make the field unstable enough to require venting. A few nanoliters of unrefined coaxium in the electrolyte would force a massive amount of initial energy through the crystal.”

“So, the overcharged beam would pass the energy lens,” Rey said, nodding. “We’d have to increase the negative polarity of the flux aperture, and install more efficient superconductors—”

“But not too efficient.”

“Because we need the excess to vent out the sides.”

“We’d have to put some dampeners in the housing to keep the radiation from leaking. And it would make the hilt heavier. But if you’re right about him being that strong—“

“Shut it.”

“It should work. If we don’t blow up half the spaceport trying.”

Rey nodded again, and smiled warmly. Rose could tell she was nervous and excited in equal measure. She looked down at the saber. At the intersection of the hilt and cross guard, there was exposed circuitry, and a single red wire soldered to the outside of the housing. Rose could discern pretty quickly that the purpose of the open panel was for easy access— having such an unstable power flow would have required frequent modifications and repairs. The wire was more puzzling.

“Honestly, though,” Rose said, lifting the saber again to more closely examine the craftsmanship, “how has he not blown his hand off before now? You sure meant it when you said, ‘unorthodox.’”

The smile on Rey’s face faded a bit, and her gaze settled on some indistinct point past the workbench.

“I suppose,” she said softly, her voice touched by tenderness and the shadow of old pain, “if you convince yourself you don’t care if you get hurt, then it’s harder to let it bother you when you do.”

Rose almost left it at that. But a feeling welled up inside her that she couldn’t ignore, and she asked what she’d wanted to know ever since the four of them had been in the focusing chamber of the First Order’s kyber weapon on Naboo.

“The crystals. How did you heal them? You promised you’d tell me one day.”

“It’s hard to describe,” Rey started, her expression becoming drawn and serious. “It’s... hope. But shared. It wasn’t enough for me to hope for us both. He had to have it, too. Healing my crystal was something that— it felt natural. It felt right. Healing his— well, I think it’s that some hope is harder to find, harder to believe in, than others.”

“Did he— Did Ben bleed his own crystal?”

Rey closed her eyes a moment, as though she was trying to summon a lost memory, and gave Rose a gentle nod. A feeling of loss and regret began to take shape in Rose’s mind. She considered the pain it had to have taken to do something so desperate. She didn’t fully understand how the crystals bonded with their users, but she knew it was something like family. And her sister’s face, and her voice, and the way she used to smile and tell Rose it would all be okay one day, visited her waking thoughts. She wondered what she would do— what she would give— to restore what she’d once thought lost forever.

Rose set her jaw, gripped her hands tightly around the saber hilt, and took a determined breath.

“Let’s do this. Let’s make this right.”

***

Ben holds the saber hilt in his hands, testing the heft of it. He lifts it up to eye level, feeling the balance, staring down the emitter coil. He turns it over thoughtfully, running his fingers down its length, regarding the new finish, the clean solders, the durasteel rivets covering the panel of previously exposed circuitry.

“It’s heavier.”

Rey stands a few paces from him, and can’t help but wring her hands in anticipation. Even though she can sense his mood, and knows he’s in the thrall of curious excitement, she isn’t able to suppress the nervousness that quivers deep inside her. And it occurs to her: she’s never actually given anyone a gift before. She wants him to like it. She wants him to love it.

“Is that— I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“No, it’s— I’m trying to guess what the two of you have been up to.”

His eyes dance with wonder. He seems transfixed by the newness of his saber. And Rey can perceive a feeling blooming across the bond: gratitude.

“Well,” she says, swallowing harder than she intended, “are you going to ignite it?”

He glances at her without turning his head, still holding the hilt at eye level. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, and he grips the hilt with both hands, bringing it down to waist height. His thumb drifts up over the ignition switch and nudges it softly, gauging its sensitivity. His eyes go to the emitter, the intensity of his focus sharpening.

He takes a deep breath, and his expression hardens. Rey can sense that it’s still new to him, asking the crystal to trust him again, resisting the urge to command it to obey. It’s been so long since he actually flipped the switch. The first time after they’d healed the crystal’s wound, the ignition had taken him by surprise, and he’d switched it off almost immediately. The blade had come on, but was a single beam of pure white plasma, and the quillions didn’t activate— they didn’t need to, since the kyber field was stable. Rey can count the number of times Ben has ignited the blade in the last few months on one hand. And now that she’s taken it on herself to modify something he built, something so intrinsically a part of him, she feels both closer to him and more anxious than ever.

Ben’s eyes close. Rey keeps hers trained on him, watching as his fingers grip and ease around the shaft of the hilt, the muscles of his arms shifting as he flexes and relaxes them, attuning himself to the crystal’s resonance, aligning it in the cradle of the focusing chamber with the Force. Long moments pass as she senses him reaching out with feelings he’s still struggling to reconcile. The Light she feels in him is stronger and more brilliant than ever, and it resonates through the bond and into her body and mind as he and his crystal commune.

His eyes open. They shimmer with vitality and earnest desire. The smile that tugged at his lips returns, full and unreserved. He pushes the ignition switch. The blade leaps to life with a smooth, vibrant hum, and, a second later, the quillions erupt with sudden light, and a pair of brilliant white plasma beams blast out, bending back into the emitters to create a perfect cross guard.

“So?” she says, unable to conceal her excitement.

“I—“ he starts, the white blades reflected in long, curved glints against the dark hazel of his eyes. “There may not be words to describe how I feel about this.”

“Well,” she says, easing in beside him, slipping her hand around his waist, “lucky I can sense your thoughts.”

He depresses the switch, and the blades glide back into the hilt in one graceful hsssh.

“And what do you sense right now?” he says, setting the saber down and turning to face her, his hands settling on her hips.

She smiles at him, her eyes alive with mischief. He leans down and presses his forehead against hers.

“You’re welcome,” she says, and pulls him down to her embrace, but it’s only a momentary thing, because next thing she knows he’s lifting her off her feet and spinning her around.

She tries to say something, but who knows what that might have been because now she’s just clinging to his neck, laughing. He gives her a devilish grin and pulls her into him, kissing her softly as he lowers her to the ground.

“I love you,” he says, his smile easy and calm.

“You know I can sense that,” she says, her hands still clasped around his neck. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to.”

His eyes are deep, and the darkness in them richer for the light reflected at the edges.

“The fact that I don’t have to say it,” he says, never leaving her eyes, “makes it all the more important that I do.”

She smiles back. The bond blazes with light.

“I love you, too,” she says, and the spaces between them collapse.

And night falls. And the mist settles in around the buildings and the hills and the distant reaches at the edge of the sky. And the places that were empty are made whole again.

And time flows on.

Notes:

I have a curated, Scrivener-organized, published novel style PDF of this story if you liked it and want a more durable, aesthetically pleasing copy. Follow me on Twitter @postedbygaslite and leave an email address in my DM inbox, and I’ll happily send over a copy.

Thank all of you again for your readership and support. I love you all. And may the Force be with you.