You're gonna do great things, kid.
The salt crystals grind under his boots, a tiny detail, a sound of fracture in every step.
He wishes he could not hear it.
.
His father is a ghost story, even when he's around.
Han Solo? When there are other children, they are eager at first, then disappointed to find the son of legends so painfully, permanently shy.
.
The Jedi rules confined him to something he wasn't. They were made to defeat minds and souls like his, though they called it taming.
When she tilts her chin up, draws close, parts her lips with his name, he knows what he has to do—and he knows why.
Rey. Rey. Rey.
Her name is simple, like a heartbeat.
.
She leaves him on his knees.
I love your father, Ben. His mother's eyes hover in memory. He can hear the low rasp of her voice. Leia Organa has always been sincere, even when she lies. I love your father.
The dice fade in his palm.
I love her, kid. She drives me crazier than a Wookiee, but I love her. How? How'd I know? Oh—you just know.
He stares down into darkness. There had been tears in Rey's eyes, once, for him.
None when she left him.
.
At least wounds bleed.
He is almost unharmed. A few scratches and bruises. Nothing to mar him, nothing to tear at his innards. This time, Kylo Ren survives.
They all bow before him now. Snoke, with decades of poison tendrilled in his mind, is a flat line of silence.
Don't do this, Ben.
At least wounds bleed. At least they can be seen, and felt, and healed.
.
You're gonna do great things, kid.
He has lost count of the lives he has taken.
He had promised himself he would never do that.
.
The press of her fingers against his is all he holds to, some days.
Supreme Leader, the Resistance has made planetfall.
Supreme Leader.
He shuts off the comm, takes no action that day. He will justify this to his officers with a platitude of watching and waiting, or he will not justify it at all.
Rey is still alive.
He thinks he would feel it if she died.
.
There was fire in her. He thinks of that blood-red room, a thing of so many nightmares, stronghold of Snoke's ambitions. And yet she had risen and burned beside him and through him, and he had thought that it was for him, too. He had let himself believe—
The next time he hears of the Resistance, he orders a strike. It is unsuccessful. He lies sleepless that night anyway.
.
Oh—you just know.
He reaches out for the pulse of his father, knowing he will not find it. Knowing that his father could never be as easily found as his mother, anyway. Han Solo was not force-sensitive.
And now Han Solo is dead. His body is not even entombed; it is dispersed across the galaxy in indistinguishable particles.
Perhaps that is as he would have wished it.
.
Come home.
She left him. She left him twice, first broken and bleeding, and then again, when he had opened up his heart instead of his flesh.
Did she know that?
She could not see it, could not be certain, perhaps, that anything beat within the cavern of himself.
At least wounds bleed.
Blood sends a message.
.
He tries.
To forget her, to forge onward, to the path that fate chose for him as much as he begged for another.
She will not be forgotten. She is like his father, that way, and his mother and his uncle. They are all ghost stories, with eyes that never fade.
.
What does it mean, to love? He dares not ask it. Or he dared not, until she stood before him, all sweat and glory and trust. Darkness is the absence of light, and so is he—a hollowed space, a longing in and of himself.
Ben, she begs, and hopes, and believes—
-and loves?
Never.
Ben. It is a sound, the memory of her voice. Not so much a heartbeat but a flutter of wings.
He wishes he could not hear it.