Chapter Text
He wakes, disoriented and alone, on the hard pallet in his hut at the Jedi Academy. The fire has died, but smoke hangs in the gloom. He could count the layers in the stacked stone walls.
Everything that’s happened must be a terrible dream. His uncle never raised his saber against his nephew. He never joined the Knights of Ren, never swore allegiance to Snoke. His father still lives. Maybe Tai will tease him for sleeping through morning meditation.
Then Master Luke’s Force-signature vanishes like a snuffed candle and quenches his hope.
Wherever he is only resembles the Academy. A breeze flutters the curtain hanging in the doorway. Daylight flickers around the edges. Heavy boots and folded clothes beckon in a black mound atop a nearby bench.
Reality is the nightmare. He’s Kylo Ren.
***
Kylo delves his memory.
His last clear recollection is lying on his back in Starkiller’s snowy forest. His vision dims as adrenaline pumps lifeblood from the uncauterized wound in his side. After that, there’s a smattering of disconnected images and sensations:
A Wookiee’s musky odor.
Sea-blue eyes crinkled above a gray beard.
The girl, lips parted and eyes closed in concentration.
Something ripping his mind with unspeakable agony.
A tender caress as warm and gentle as spring sun.
That girl. His heart squeezes. The scavenger had bested him, debilitated as he was. She could have killed him. Why didn’t she?
He probes the flesh under his sleepshirt’s rough weave. Where he should bear wounds from Chewie’s bowcaster and his grandfather’s lightsaber, smooth skin yields only mild tenderness. Where a gash should cleave his cheek and jaw, scruffy facial hair meets his fingertips.
He’s been healed but not by the First Order or conventional medicine. Life energy lingers around him in a golden shimmer. Only two users could have Force-healed him: his uncle or his mother. Apart from that fleeting echo of Luke’s Force-signature, he doesn’t sense either one.
Kylo stretches muscles stiff from disuse. How long has he lain here?
He reaches for the Force—and finds silence, stillness, serenity. Snoke’s absence shakes him to the core.
He flings a feverish summons across the stars. Master?
He waits. No answer comes. Snoke has used silence before to test his loyalty.
Kylo turns his sight inward and seeks the chaos that is his master’s lair and the dark fire that shades his every memory. His pulse races, half fear and half hope.
The same golden energy glimmers within his mind. Snoke has been uprooted like a withered stump and soil smoothed into the cavity. Raw earth awaits new growth.
His master’s gone and with him the darkness and death, the simmering rage, the fear and pervasive anxiety.
Maybe he should feel loss or sorrow, but he only knows relief. Freedom. He sucks the salt air deep into his lungs. No one can recall their first breath, but it must be something like this. He’s alive.
Ben, he thinks. My name is Ben Solo.
***
Kylo Ren’s mended clothes hang loose on Ben’s frame. He’s lost weight since Starkiller. He stands outside the domed hut and surveys his surroundings:
This is the island the scavenger saw in her dreams.
The little hamlet is unoccupied at present, but life teems all around. Creatures great and small labor with diligence, whether by instinct or sentience.
The Falcon squats on an outcropping far below. Chewbacca’s grief shadows the space he occupies in the Force.
Ben looks down the winding steps. Beyond the freighter and beneath the island, a Force nexus of Dark eddies like a whirlpool. It calls but doesn’t compel him. Not like before.
He turns in the opposite direction and faces the steep, rocky incline. A temple might stand at the crest, but the lowering sun veils the apex in radiance. A Force nexus of Light calls and doesn’t repel him. Not like before.
For the first time, the choice is his.
He begins to climb the hill.
***
When Ben enters the temple, his labored breath ricochets in the chamber. He’s lost strength and conditioning too. He rests his palm on the ancient stone wall and feels Light pulse in the Force like a heartbeat beneath his hand. So this is what Luke strove to teach him all those years, while Ben was blinded by Dark.
He drags his fingers through the shallow pool and traces the mosaic of the Prime Jedi, Light and Dark held in balance.
Momentous as they are, neither the Light nexus nor the Prime Jedi drew him here. There’s something else. His heart pounds with anticipation. Ben lifts his gaze.
Not something else, but someone else.
She meditates atop a boulder overlooking the white-capped ocean, her back to him. Tiny wildflowers from the mountain slope glint like stars in her hair. She’s framed by the temple arch and gilded in the setting sun.
The scavenger.
The girl.
Rey.
***
Gravel crunches beneath Ben’s heel, and Rey spins. Her brow furrows and lips tighten as her meditative peace flees. Still, she’s more beautiful than he recalls.
“You’re awake,” she says.
“You healed me,” he says even as the revelation sweeps over him.
She plucks at weeds pushing through a crevice in the rock. “It’s complicated, but yes.”
“How? Force-healing is an advanced skill”—one that even Ben never mastered—“and you’re untrained.”
She squints into the distance and chews her cheek before returning her gaze to him. “We took you to the base in secret, but medical resources were strained and your—your mother feared you’d be assassinated. Then R2 woke up and everything happened quickly. We had the last piece to the map and Leia said her brother was your only hope. So Chewie and I smuggled you out.”
His mother let him go and didn’t keep him captive at the Resistance base? Chewie shot him and then saved him? They found his missing uncle? It defies belief. “You’re saying Luke Skywalker healed me.”
“More like guided your healing.”
Then that faint signature must be real. He still doesn’t sense his one-time master, but he’s not here to discuss Luke.
“Why save me?” He needs to understand. “I’m the enemy. I threw you into a karking tree and cut the traitor to his spine.” And those are only his most recent sins. “Why not leave me to die?”
Her lower lip quivers. “Finn. His name’s Finn. He’s sedated in a bacta suit.”
Does this Finn mean so much to her? Ben’s chest twinges. Why is he jealous? Rey is nothing to him just as Ben is nothing to her, yet if that’s true, then why did she heal him? He strides forward until he towers over her. He must know. “Why did you do it?”
She stares up, unafraid. Liquid glosses her hazel eyes. “To finish what Han Solo started.”
It’s the last thing he expects her to say.
“Your father gave his life for you because he loved you. He came to Starkiller to bring you home. How could you be disappointed in him? How could you kill him? How could you.” Sorrow chokes her voice. “I saved you so that his sacrifice would mean something.”
He wants to summon fury that she would save him for his father’s sake and not his own, but it’s like a lightsaber spears his chest. His heart’s no longer armored in darkness. Her words reverberate in his head; his mind’s no longer shielded behind a mask. He loved you. He gave his life for you.
No. No. No.
Anguish lances his soul, and he stumbles back. No. It’s impossible.
Ben drops to his knees and gravel bites through his pants. He folds forward and cradles his head between his arms. It can’t be true.
He rocks back and forth to the mantra. He loved you. He gave his life for you. This love will break his heart. He won’t survive the agony.
He keens into the Force, to the sky, to the stars. Dad.
***
A gentle hand strokes Ben’s back in calming circles. When was the last time anyone touched him in kindness or comfort? Maybe his mother before he left for the Academy, if she was home.
He leans into Rey’s caress. He’s barely mastered the flood of grief, and he could weep over her tenderness.
She kneels in the stones beside him, and her lovely face glitters with tears. How can she feel compassion for him when he’s cost her so much? He doesn’t deserve such grace.
A golden glow shimmers between them in the Force, though not in the visible spectrum. Rey scoops light into her palm like water then opens her hand. Luminous ribbons spool from her fingers and dissipate.
A quiet smile tips her mouth. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Awe beats with soft wings behind his ribs. “You’re crafted from Light.”
“Not me. Us. This”—she swirls her finger through the radiance and sparks dance—“is the life force of our bond. Master Luke identified it when we were working to save you. This is what healed you and evicted Snoke from your mind, a power like life itself.” She raises shining eyes to his. “We’re a dyad in the Force, Ben.”
He combs his mental archives. “I always thought dyads were a myth like soulmates.”
“Not myth. Real. Feel it. Our souls”—she rests her palm over his heart and the glow arcs between them like a solar flare—“are one.”
He does feel it. The truth resounds to his depths. Unfathomable joy wells up and swells over him. He’s been alone and searching for so long, but now she is his as he is hers. Everything in him recognizes her as the mirror to his soul and equal in the Force. They know so little about one another, yet he can hardly wait to know her and be known by her. He revels. He leaps to his feet and pulls her up beside him. He wants to swing her around and shout yes to galaxy’s end. How can he rise from the depths of despair to such heights of hope in mere moments?
He smiles. So what if his teeth are crooked, his mouth too wide and his features uneven? Such rapture cannot be repressed.
“Stars, Ben.” Her fingers thread into his hair and her thumb settles at the corner of his lips. Her touch thrills then shocks him to his senses.
“Rey, no.” Wonder recedes like surf revealing a beach of hidden stones. “You can’t be bound to someone like me. I’m—I’m—” He can’t find an adjective to capture all he’s been and done. “You should be free to choose, to live, to love.”
She drops her hand and steps away but lifts her chin, defiant. “Maz told me on Takodana that the belonging I sought was not behind but ahead and that there was someone who could still come back.”
The sun dips into the ocean and sunset refracts across the waves with an emerald flash. Far below, the surf rolls in and thunders against the cliffs. The sky sinks from purple to orange and reflects in her depthless eyes.
“I choose you.” Her cheeks dimple with her smile, and she extends her fingers in invitation. “You’re my belonging, Ben.”
He takes her hand.
***