Title: After Life
Characters: Kylo Ren, Luke Skywalker, Rey, Leia Organa, Armitage Hux
Words: 18,000
Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Setting: The morning after The Last Jedi ends and for about a week after. Mostly set on the Supremacy, Snoke's ruined flagship.
Summary: With the help of Force-ghost Luke, Kylo Ren puts his life together after the events of The Last Jedi.

Kylo Ren woke because he had to. His head was throbbing in a line that followed the lightsaber scar and his side echoed the pain with every beat of his heart. Kylo rested his palm over the wound that still hadn't healed, the one he'd taken from Chewbacca's bowcaster. It should have been gone, sealed over and forgotten. The medical droids insisted they'd done all that could be done for it, yet it still festered. The lightsaber scar was better, but it, too, hurt when it shouldn't have. There was no one he could ask why. He was sure Snoke would have known what was wrong. But discussing a weakness with Snoke? No. Not even when the Sith was alive. But that was just yesterday.

Kylo sat on the edge of his bed, cradling his aching head with one hand, still holding his side with the other. Yesterday. It was too much to sort out. He'd lost Luke and Snoke both in the same span. Then Rey and with her, his future. He wanted to see his mother so badly that it ripped a single, stifled sob from him. There was no one else for him and even she, he knew somehow, had given up on him. She'd closed the door on him just as much as Rey had. He was more truly alone than he'd ever been.

He swallowed roughly and finally lifted his head, but what he saw was like a bolt of Force lightning had shot through him. A hazy blue projection of his old master was standing in front of his door, looking at him with a tilted head and those penetrating, critical eyes of his. In an instant, Kylo's saber had flown to his hand, flicked on the moment it impacted his palm, and in nearly the same motion, slashed through the image and the door, leaving a glowing, sputtering arc in its wake.

It wasn't that Kylo didn't know it was an image, but that his reaction to seeing Luke again was that visceral. He caught himself, poised in the middle of recovering his fighting stance, as he remembered how Rey had responded the first time she'd seen him through the Force bond. She'd shot him. Instantly. It had hurt, too, a pulse that seemed to center on the bowcaster wound and spread through him like a real impact. It hadn't helped Rey to lash out at him like that, no matter how understandable. Assaulting his door wasn't going to help him, either. He almost missed how the image of Luke spread his hands and looked down at his undamaged form, brows lifted in mild surprise as though this, too, was new for his old master.

Kylo wrenched himself back upright and away from the mirage. He looked around his chambers, trying to ascertain the source of the projection. It had to be coming from somewhere.

"I told you I'd be seeing you," Luke said calmly. The projection walked over to the bed, looking down at it with a contemplative frown. "I suppose showing up unexpectedly in your bedchambers wasn't the best idea, though."

"I will destroy whoever's idea of a prank this is," Kylo shouted, even as he began to realize this was no more a technological feat than his Force bond conversations with Rey had been. He directed his eyes back to Luke. "You're dead. You died. I felt it. What is this?"

Luke shrugged. "I used to think I had failed you when you needed me most." Luke looked up from the bed, turning back to face Kylo as though waiting for an answer or comment. The ghostly apparition shimmered. Kylo waved his lightsaber blade back and forth through Luke's body just to see what happened, which was nothing. Kylo clicked off the blade with a scowl. Luke gave a single nod and continued, "I've been wrong about a lot of things. You need me the most now."

"I don't need you," Kylo snarled. He began to hastily change from his sleeping garments into his day clothes. In a vicious tone, he added, "What, did you sense Snoke was dead and think I needed a new master? I don't need a master." He whirled to face Luke. "I am the master now!"

Luke surveyed him coolly. "I see. A lot of mastery there – half-dressed, spitting with rage."

"I don't have to listen to you. I have more important things to do." He finished dressing with jerky motions, struggling to override the crippling pain that flared in his side.

Luke's eyes lingered on the black bandage that wrapped Kylo's midsection. "What, that whole 'ruling the galaxy' thing?"

"Yes," he snapped. "As a matter of fact, yes. I am the supreme leader of the First Order!" He moved on Luke with an aggressive lunge, the likes of which had caused lesser men to fall over themselves flinching back from him. Luke raised his brows and calmly crossed his hands in front of himself. It was a reaction, at least. "Do you know what that means?" Kylo demanded, his face inches from Luke's. The line of his lightsaber scar felt like it was on fire, burning hotter the closer he got. With a grimace, he walled off the sensation.

"Tell me."

Kylo's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but he answered anyway. "It means I am the most powerful being in the galaxy. I am the leader of the entire re-organized empire. There is no military that can even come close to matching the one at my command. What is left of the New Republic will kneel before me! I have accomplished what even grandfather was unable to do! I have no emperor standing over me, no foot on my throat! No one rules me!"

He thrust his hand into Luke's chest, grasping and twisting in another sudden effort to destroy the man. Despite the empty air, there was something there, something he could feel with his flesh. It was ephemeral and slippery. He couldn't get a grip on it. His hand spasmed. Luke winced and moved to the side. Kylo looked at his hand, flexing it as the cramping passed, then at Luke, who seemed unharmed. Kylo tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

"Yeah. Good for you, then, I guess," Luke said. "Sounds tedious if you ask me."

"I did not ask. Anyway, what would you know about leadership?" Kylo moved over to pick up his gloves. He put them on with a last look at the hand he'd tried to pull Luke's heart out with. "You couldn't even run a preschool for a dozen children without getting the place burned down!"

"You were a little older than a preschooler, Ben."

The exaggeration was a step too far. He'd been twenty-three, not five. Kylo slid his lightsaber into its holder. "Is that why you waited until I was an adult to try to kill me? Didn't want to continue the family tradition of killing younglings, is that it? You should have struck me down when you had the chance!"

Luke's face fell. He looked at the floor with an expression of sadness. "I never should have done it at all."

Rage welled up inside of him – at Luke, at Snoke, at Rey, at himself – but mostly at Luke for being the decisive trigger that had set the past in motion. Now, now, Luke wanted to feel bad about his mistakes? "It's too late for that!" Kylo spat, and left his quarters. The saber-scarred doors opened easily enough, but there was no sound of them closing behind him. He refused to look back.