A/N: Happy May the Fourth!
Disclaimer: I don't own
Sith only get one name, the low voice in Ben Solo's mind whispers the night before his thirteenth birthday. The name of the person who can destroy them. Ben already knows this, he's heard stories about the names on people's wrists: your left was your soulmate and your right was your adversary. He's seen his mother's wrists; his father's name on her left and his grandfather's on her right. He knows some only got one name; his father had only his mother's name on his left wrist ("I have too many enemies," he'd joke).
The morning of his thirteenth birthday Ben checks his wrists. He feels his stomach lurch at having names on both. However, there has to be something wrong.
Rey is scrawled on both his wrists.
When Rey unwraps her arms one morning she's slightly surprised to find names scrawled across them. She has a vague idea of when her birthday is but she has no real reason to keep track of days and has heard enough stories to know what they are. She last unwrapped her arms four days ago so, somewhere in between, she became thirteen. She traces each one: her left wrist says Ben Solo while her right says Kylo Ren.
It's too much to hope that Ben Solo is related to the Han Solo of the stories she's scavenged. She's heard whispers of Kylo Ren from the traders that stop at Niima. He's the scourge of the First Order.
She's certain her right wrist is wrong: she's a nobody scavenger on an Outer Rim planet, she's too small to have a nemesis let alone this one. She uses the same reasoning for the name on her left wrist: the last name is a coincidence, nothing more.
She carefully wraps her arms again, hiding the names and pushing idle fantasies out of her mind. She needs portions not silly dreams.
She's terrified when she first sees Kylo Ren on Takodona. Yet adrenaline is pumping through her veins after shooting the Stormtrooper and only gets stronger as she runs. She can hear him running after her, knows she'll try to hit him with the blaster.
She stops running and stands across from him. She shoots; they're easily avoided until she can't lower her arm or pull the trigger again. Her breathing becomes shallow and her body ceases up.
She feels the energy of his saber as it nears her throat. She denies knowing where BB-8 is (somewhere far away, she hopes).
"No matter, you've seen the map," he says and her blood runs cold.
I hope they're all safe, is her last thought before unconsciousness takes her.
Kylo Ren knows her name is Rey, he saw it in the scattered thoughts just on the surface of her mind. This desert rat is possibly his greatest foe. He feels a keen pleasure in how easy it was to capture her. He can, and will, conquer anything.
(She could be your soulmate, a tired wary voice that sounds surprisingly like his mother says before he pushes the thought away.)
He waits for her to wake up. There's nothing to study: she's slight but tall. She could use a trip to the fresher. He tries to find the map in her mind but it's blank, he'll have to wait till she wakes up.
She stirs and he sits up straighter. She spits fire that he appreciates. He's not sure why he takes off his mask at her comment but he does. She has information he needs and if this will help him get it so be it. She does not yield so easily, he'll have to take.
Her mind is easy enough to slip into. He passes memories of sand and blistering heat, of hunger and worry. She's going to have this hidden, somewhere buried deep. He sees the island he taunts her with, can feel the new greenery she's added to it.
Before she begins to push him out of her mind he sees it. It's not the map, not at all.
He sees his names branded on her wrists.
Rey's feels like someone punched her in the gut when she hears Han Solo scream "Ben!" She watches from her perch, rooted to the ground with Finn next to her. For a moment she thinks this will end easily.
The light fades and she's not sure what's happening on the bridge till the red of his saber flares to life. She screams and wants to vault the railing and try to save Han. Instead she watches him fall. Chewie shoots Kylo; she thinks she should feel some sort of remorse for that.
After all if he is Ben Solo, then he's her soulmate.
He truly does not expect her to ignite the saber once it's in her hands. He's beginning to learn to not underestimate her. She has to be close to fight; her parries are much more suited to a different weapon.
His side is becoming soaked with blood but he has to win. He should feel power surging through his veins but all he feels is the rush of adrenaline. He ignores the sharper pain in his chest that he doesn't want to name.
He tells her she needs a teacher (she does, her invasion of his thoughts was clumsy and her raw talent needs honing) as he towers over her.
But when she bests him, when she pulls power from the Force in such a foreign way along with her inner strength, he becomes acutely aware that she is much more formidable than he expected.
There's a chasm between them and she's off running. She'll be the death of him, he realizes as the cold bits into the open wound on his face.
A death that might be sooner than he expects if he's not off the planet in time.
Finn is safely in the medibay and General Organa is listening to her pilots recap their battle. There's going to be a celebration (and memorial) at some point but right now Rey's tucked into a room that might be called her's if she stays.
Her head aches from crying and her body is sore from movements she's not used to. There's a fresher in her room, something she vaguely remembers from before Jakku. She should use it, should move from the bed she's perched on.
Yet all she's done is unwrap her arms to stare at her wrists. The names that have been a possibility have a single face behind them. She traces the Ben Solo on her left wrist, knowing that there is a very real possibility there is nothing left of her soulmate. The name on her right makes sense now; she's part of a larger fight now and with that comes adversaries.
She's still tracing Ben Solo's name (again) when General Organa enters.
"I knocked," the older woman says. Rey tries to hide her left hand. "The names don't go away," she says, rolling up her left sleeve where Rey can still see Han's name written.
"I'm sorry," Rey finally says after a long pause.
Leia sits down next to her on the bed and gently cradles both of Rey's wrists in her hands. "I'm sorry too," she says. Rey's not sure how to respond. "Take the Falcon," Leia finally says. "Go find my brother."
And Rey knows she will do just that and ignore the names on her wrists for the time being.
Even days later Kylo Ren can still smell the sharp scent of bacta when he breathes. His wounds have healed: there are three new pale scars on his body that add to the ones already there. The bowcaster wound in his side still throbs at times.
(He's aware his uncle is a better shot than Han Solo; he's alive because the Wookie wanted him to live.)
He's marked by her, now, in more ways than the names on his wrists. His mask hides his face. He stopped looking in the mirror long ago but can't help but see his reflection in the clear durasteel of the ship's windows. The pale line she drew across his face only helps him focus on what he's been trying to hide: the mixture of his parents on his face, staring back at him.
He looks away, the raw emotion in his chest is starting to eat at him. He's refusing to name it, names have power after all. He almost feels the names on his wrist burn at the thought.
He will destroy her before she destroys him.
He has no need for a soulmate.
To Rey Luke is an interesting creature. She's seen people with metal appendages before but Luke's metal hand moves more like a machine. She's caught herself staring a few times and quickly looked away.
Finally she asks if she can make some improvements for him.
"I've had it for over thirty years now," he tells her as he curls his metal fingers. "It's served me well."
"You sure?" She asks, tools ready if needed.
"I am."
"Do you miss it?" She asks.
Luke shakes his head. "No, not missing much anyway." She raises an eyebrow. "I never had a soulmate," he explains. Rey let's the fingers of her right hand ghost over her covered left. "But you do."
She looks away. "He's dead," she says.
Kylo can feel the burn of his saber as it hovers just over the name on his left wrist. He can burn it off, erase this weak part of him.
"Sir," a Stormtrooper says. He's more startled by the pain on his arm as the crossbar of his saber grazes just under Rey's name.
"Do not disturb me," he barks. He senses the Stormtrooper back away; his reputation proceeds him and he's willing to use it at all costs.
The angry red welt is just above Rey's name this time. He has three more, all pale lines framing her name on his left wrist.
She thinks she might have possibly wanted to get to know Ben Solo. For the first few weeks Luke barely spoke about his former students. Slowly, as time went on, he'd mention details about them, sometimes a name. Any mention of Ben had a tinge of melancholy.
Through Luke's words emerges a solitary, moody boy who wants everyone treated equally. He liked to create almost impossible things and wanted to tell his mother everything.
Yet she's sure she'll never meet Ben Solo. She stares at the name as she pieces together the parts she asked Chewie to get for her on one of his off world junts. She'd seen people with tattoos in Niima but never actually known how they got them.
She attaches the needle to the end of the blaster like contraption. She holds it steady in her right hand, needle poised over her wrist. She presses down and turns the machine on. Immediately she pulls back with a hiss.
By the time she decides to stop there's a constellation of black dots around Ben Solo's name.
They should meet again in battle in an appropriately grandiose place, he thinks. Mustafar would be best.
Instead he's in a TIE fighter he's rigged to pilot on his own trying his best to gun down the Millennium Falcon while trying to avoid the atmosphere of a nearby planet. He can sense her presence on board, has been able to sense her faintly since Starkiller.
He knows all of the Falcon's weak points and aims for them. He hits on that will bring the ship down. He'll finally be rid of her once and for all.
In his brief celebration he misses the shot headed his way. It's a nearly perfect hit. He tries to slow the descent of his fighter but it's no use.
At least I landed, is his last thought before he blacks out in his fighter after hitting the ground.
"Chewie wanted me to make sure you lived," Rey tells Kylo as she spoon feeds him.
"You don't always have to listen to the Wookie," Kylo says in a rough voice. She resists the urge to poke her finger into one of his wounds. He's lucky to even be alive, and luckier still that she was willing to stay with him while Chewie went for help after she repaired the Falcon.
Better to bring back a live prisoner to stand trial than a body.
"You try disagreeing with him and then we'll see how much of a death wish you really have," she says. "Stop talking and eat."
"Then let me sit up and feed myself." Her instincts tell her he's still too injured for that but her pride wants him to fail.
"Fine." She moves away from his prone body on the makeshift bed. She places the bowl on the ground next to it, waiting for him to pick it up.
He sits up slowly and she's aware that there's less of him when his robes and power have been stripped away. She is not, however, surprised that even under his layers of black robes his shirt is black as well. He takes a few steadying breaths before slowly reaching for the bowl.
She watches him with a sick fascination as he neglects the spoon and brings the whole bowl to his lips. Broth dribbles down the side of his mouth to his shirt. "I did it," he says weakly.
"You can almost survive on your own now that you can feed yourself," she says. "Now go back to sleep."
He glares at her like he wants to defy her. She wins when he falls back down.
Kylo willingly admits the Empire built things to last. They're cooped up in an abandoned base on Endor that still has working freshers (for which he is grateful). He's been to this planet before and appreciates the scavenger's ability to find sturdy shelter rather than trying to befriend the Ewoks.
Their rations are adequate and he can feel his body mending. Rey, however, presents a much more fascinating puzzle than why there is still clean water available to the base.
He's watched her meditate and work through forms he recognizes from his early training. He's been on the end of her verbal barbs while still being shoved half of whatever she is making to eat. She paces the entire room and glances to the window like she wants to leave. She's brought back parts she's found scattered through the base and has been working on taking them apart and reassembling them every day.
She's currently sitting in the opposite corner from his makeshift bed in the tiny room they've made their home for, well, he's not sure how many days. He's watching her work on an old blaster she's found. It can't fire at the moment and he's waiting for her to finish it and point it at him. Her lightsaber has remained clipped to her belt.
He watches her blow a piece of hair out of her face for the fifth time. She finally gives up and brushes it away with her left hand. He notices two things then: her customary arm wraps are in a pile in the corner and there are black marks around his old name.
"What did you do?" He asked harshly.
"Took out the power core," she said without looking up. "Why?"
"To your wrist," he clarified.
"My what?" She looked up and he nodded towards her left. He watched her lips purse. "I wanted to be rid of that name," she said.
"So you thought to tattoo it off?" He quipped.
"Better than whatever left all the scars on your wrist."
He has no response for her. Instead he lies down and pretends to sleep.
"I couldn't blot out the name," she says softly later that night after she's turned off their only lamp.
She hopes he's asleep but is not surprised when she hears "why couldn't you?"
"I might have liked Ben Solo," she answers.
"He was weak," Kylo says.
"From what I've heard he wasn't," she replies. She waits for him to say something. She waits and only silence penetrates the darkness.
"You can't know that," he finally says softly.
"I like the stories Luke tells."
The sound she hears from him is almost like a snort but doesn't think he's capable of making that human of a sound. "He wasn't anything special."
"Thanks to you I'll never know." She rolls away from him and wills herself not to hear anything he has to say.
His strength is returning and he's never going to take bacta for granted again. Yet he's beginning to think there's something wrong with him.
He finds he likes this slip of a girl (Who has bested him in a fight and stronger than she seems). He likes listening to her mutter while she tinkers, how she always makes sure he's had enough to eat, and the way she moves through the exercises Luke has given her.
This, in his opinion, is the end of him.
"Why did you try to erase my name?" She asks as their eating a meal that he assumes is in the evening (there aren't windows in the room they've claimed as theirs).
"Sith don't have soulmates," he explains simply.
"But you do."
"It's my destiny to finish what Darth Vader started."
"That sounds ridiculous." He bristles, who is she to tell him what to do? "Why would you want to be part of the Dark Side?"
"Power," he says simply.
"And how's that going?" She asks.
He doesn't answer because she knows very well that she has a point.
She's grown attached to him. She doesn't want to admit it to herself but he's clawed his way into psyche and she's beginning to care about him. Which is utterly ridiculous because he'd kill her if he had the chance.
"Are you going to hand me over to the Resistance?" He asks one morning when he joins her for meditation.
"Yes," she says. Hopefully Chewie will be back soon with reinforcements.
"You could come with me," he offers.
"No thank you."
"Why?" He sounds like a whining child.
"I have a teacher and you're wrong and maybe you should come with me!" She shouts.
"And why should I come with you?! You're supposed to want to kill me anyway!"
"I'm supposed to destroy Kylo Ren! I could possibly love Ben Solo and maybe I want to salvage what I can of him!" She's breathing harshly and hates that he's made her this mad.
"You can't save him-"
"Of course I can't! You're the only one who can decide who you want to be! I'm not going to be your savior!"
"That's your job-"
"It's your life!" He looks beaten down at her words but she won't take them back. "I'll listen to you but you make your own decisions." She stands and walks out of their room.
The Force must be with her because she almost runs into Finn and the rest of the Resistance members who've come to their rescue.
He hadn't seen his mother cry since he first went to study with Luke. She'd hugged him tightly and told him to do his best while his shirt soaked up her tears. Leia cried the first time she came to visit him and the growing pain in his chest increases at the sight. She brings him all his meals.
Rey hasn't come to see him.
As Leia sets down his tray of food that night he says "I'd like to see Rey."
"She might not want to see you," Leia says.
"I know," he replies. "But I have something I want to tell her."
He watches his mother look him up and down. He hopes that she will honor his request. "I'll ask," she finally says.
"Thank you."
Rey comes just as he's finishing eating. "You wanted to see me?"
"Your forms are sloppy," he says. "I can help."
"I already told you I don't need a teacher."
"I never said I'd teach you," He corrects. "I said I can help."
She narrows her eyes. "How?"
"If I'm not sentenced to die," he tries to say that as lightly as possible, "I want to make sure you know what you're doing."
"That sounds fair. You could just leave it to someone else though."
"Are you going to make me say I like spending time with you?"
She smirks. "You just did."
He's going to end up hating how smug she gets. "Then I won't have to say it again."
"You're doing this because you want to?" She asks.
"I've been told I'm selfish."
"We can work on that."
He feels himself start to smile, something he hasn't wanted to do in years. "Together."
"Together," she agrees and for once the ache in his chest goes away with her smile.
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