A Mother's Love

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Star Wars or any related titles, characters, plots, setting, etc. These rights belong solely to George Lucas, Lucasfilms, Disney, and the various publishing and distributing agents of which they make use. I own only the original elements of this story, the writing and publishing of which make me absolutely no money.

Aboard Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle

Finally. Finally, he was going to prove himself to the Supreme Leader, to the First Order, and regain the esteem of his fellow Knights of Ren. As Kylo honed in on the ship carrying one General Leia Organa, he braced himself. Killing Han Solo may have split his soul to the bone - as Snoke had recently claimed while berating him - but killing Leia was going to shatter those split remains into fragments too broken to allow him to continue functioning. This, more than anything else, would force him into the Dark Side.

Something tingled at the edge of his consciousness, on the very fringes of the expanded awareness brought about by his Force-strengthened mind, but he pushed it away in favor of doing a scan of the ship's passengers. It helped him familiarize himself before the attacks in order to know potential victims. Snoke had praised him for it once when he had been able to confirm the death of a particular man who had been strong with the Force. Since Snoke's praises were few and far between, Kylo had since made the scans a routine practice.

His mind slid past those of countless others, skimming across the surfaces to glean their identity in seconds without ensnaring himself in the endless tide of their thoughts. One mind, however, stuck to his. Instead of moving past at his normal clip, they caught and pulled, sliding edge-to-edge like two ships scraping hulls. There was only one person on that ship strong enough to hold his attention: General Organa.

Almost instantly, her mind had latched to his own. Leia was untrained but powerful, and though she was unable to communicate as eloquently as he prided himself on doing, she made her point through emotions and images. She reached out to her son - or what was left of him - and he could tell from the wavering connection that it was a fantastic effort on her part.

Even through the slight connection, the force of Leia's personality punched at him fiercely as she pushed screamingly stark emotion into his mind. There was fear, naturally, tinged with a sense of horror that he would take part in an attack of this nature. She didn't shy away from either feeling; instead, she let him experience the full brunt of her panic, her overwhelming need for the Rebellion to survive.

No one could see him, but Kylo fought to keep his face impassive. Not only did it make him feel stronger, but too much emotion released would pull irritatingly at the still-present wound running down his cheek. It was covered by a thin strip of bacta tape, but there was only so much it could do. The girl, Rey, had most likely scarred him permanently. Of course, all of this served only as a distraction from the twisting in the empty expanse that used to house his heart.

Kylo wanted to ignore the General and her pleas for him to stop, to leave behind the First Order and the Supreme Leader, but a response burst from him, echoing through the space between them instantly:

"I can't stop now. I've come too far. I've done too much... I killed your son so I could become someone stronger."

And yet, Snoke pushes for more, a nasty voice in his head hissed. He wants more, but you have nothing left to give. What is he going to do when he finds out that you have changed as much as you are capable? That if he pushes any farther, you will break?

Before he could push it back into the screaming corner that housed Ben Solo, Kylo's mind transmitted that haunting, irrepressable image of Han Solo, frozen in his last painful moment.

Immediately, there is an answering flash of pain from the General, filled with unfathomable pain, unending sorrow, and a sense of love that dwarfed both. Kylo's mind filled with pictures of their life, joined eventually by a dark-haired little boy with a face filled with damnable sensitivity and eyes that spoke of sorrow beyond his years…

He had never known she had noticed.

Leia wasn't finished. The images came thick and fast: his first lightsaber, the first time Han had helped him fire a blaster, the day he left to become Luke's apprentice. He felt the love, felt the sorrow, felt the concern. He - the man who had shut himself off from every emotion so that he could become the monster he was labeled - was rocked by wave after wave of raw feeling. It was overwhelming, so much so that he didn't notice when the images stopped containing Han.

They turned into the memories of a mother, and Kylo found himself staring down at his own face at a variety of ages. Pride, tenderness, sorrow, exasperation, and even occasionally hatred flowed into him from her, but always there was the underlying sense of love. She loved him. Even after everything he had done to ruin her life - to ruin everyone's lives - his mother offered him acceptance, sanctuary, forgiveness. And for the first time in what seemed like centuries, Kylo felt his ever-present cloud of rage dissipating.

He wanted her forgiveness.

Weakness, the voice sneered at him. To need comfort from your mother, the woman who gave you over to her brother, that precious Jedi who tried his best to kill you… You must be truly ignorant of her plans for you if her forgiveness is what you want more than your revenge.

He squared his shoulders and clenched his jaw, flying toward the ship once more with purpose. He could feel the General's mind flinch away from his as steely resolve filled him once again, but she retained the contact.

Even when the other TIE Fighters zeroed in, guns trained on the highly-visible bridge, she kept the communication with her son. For that was who he was to her. He, Kylo Ren - the man who had done his best to destroy every fragment of Ben Solo - was embraced in her final moments. Leia watched the beams flying at her, moving at much too high a speed to prevent, and her last thought wasn't of herself, or Luke, or even of her precious Rebellion...

No, Leia's final thought was of him. Bearing the knowledge that her life was about to end, she pushed at him a deep sense of love and peace - an intoxicating mixture of feelings that end abruptly as the beams connect.

Kylo's heart stopped.

"Mom…" he said softly, the word heavy in the air of the cockpit. No one would ever hear it, no one could. Leia would never hear it again.

But, no. That wasn't right. He could feel her, a spark still burning inside of her limply-floating body. She was still alive. Just barely, and not for long, but there was hope.

Kylo's communications line crackled. Hux was calling him back to the ship, where he would be under the protection of the guns. There was every chance Hux would kill him when he was in range of said guns, but he replied in an absent affirmative. However, instead of turning around to return, Kylo leaned forward in the cockpit, brushing dark hair from his eyes as he focused on the form of General Leia Organa.

How many times had he heard the story? Surely once every time his parents saw Luke Skywalker. 'That was how he told me,' she would say with an exasperated chuckle. 'The Force is strong in my family. My father has it, I have it, my sister has it. What a way to find out! And I still can't use the Force!'

'Good thing, too,' Han would inevitably chime in with a mischievous grin. 'I don't doubt you would use it in some pretty evil ways.'

They would all laugh and, unlike his reaction at the time, Kylo nearly smiled now. Those times seemed so long ago, so far away, and yet… so precious. But Leia was, at the very least, Force-sensitive. He could work with that.

Narrowing his gaze until Leia's floating silhouette was all he could see, Kylo applied his entire focus to her mind. That spark was still there and he fanned it until it blazed. To that small fire, he added the knowledge he had gained over the years, transmitting exactly how it felt to pull oneself through the air using nothing but the Force. How you could use it to move yourself, or to move other things.

He sent all of this to Leia's nearly unresponsive mind, pushing with it the harsh, unrelenting need to survive - if not for herself, then for her precious Rebellion. He was helped along by her body; it was fighting to survive as well, and it latched onto his instructions.

Progress was slow, but Leia's eyes cracked open, zeroing in on one of the doors leading from the bridge to a hallway, a vacuum-sealed door with a window that would allow for her to be pulled inside. Finally, with a herculean effort, she raised a hand, pooled everything he had given her, and began floating gently back to the ship.

Kylo helped as much as he could, but from the distance he was currently hovering at, he could do little more than nudge her now and again when she began to slow. Still, he didn't breathe fully until she had been taken inside of the ship.

As he flew back to the First Order vessels, Kylo found that half of his mind stayed with his mother, monitoring her health until she stabilized and he knew she would recover.

For that's what she was to him now: Not General Organa, not the Princess, not even Leia. She was his mother. They would be pitted against each other on the battlefield again and again until at least one of them was dead, but she was his mother and she loved him. It would take everything he had to hide it from Snoke, but he loved her, too.

And that, to his surprise, was the moment he began to heal.

Author's Note - Honesty moment for you: I saw The Last Jedi in theaters three times. On that last viewing, the idea for this story hit me so strongly that I had to leave and type out a quick note to myself on my phone so I didn't forget it. That moment and its glorious subtext was so incredibly clear to me that I had to take an hour or so to get this story written. As far as I can figure out, this story would have very little impact on the events of TLJ. At the end, Kylo is very pragmatic about his relationship with his mother. He knows that they will still fight each other and, one day, one will win and the other will die. As he understands it, there is no other outcome. If you want, imagine that (if this were to actually happen canonically), Leia would simply omit one line at the end when she's speaking to Luke: "I know my son is gone." She still doesn't know for a certainty that Kylo is the reason she survived the bridge explosion, but in the communication they had, she felt his remorse and need for forgiveness. She knows Ben is still there. Or, just consider this to be outside of canon. It doesn't especially hurt my feelings either way.

I know this was an extremely short story and I thank you for giving it a chance anyway. If you loved it, hated it, or just want to tell me what you thought of Last Jedi, I love all forms of feedback (and have a lot of strong opinions about the movie, obviously) and will answer any reviews in PM so you'll be sure to get a response. Thanks again for reading and may the Force be with you! (Don't make that face at me, you know I had to.)