What better way to bring in the New Year than by posting a heart-breaking Kylo Ren oneshot?

I wish you all a wonderful end of 2016, and can't wait to see what 2017 brings for all of us!

Much love, always,

~Sapphire-Raindrop

"That Would Be Enough"
a "Star Wars" oneshot
by Sapphire-Raindrop

The ground around Kylo Ren was crumbling to pieces, cracking and splitting and melting into the core of the planet. Through the agony of his injuries, he somehow managed to wonder if he would soon share the planet's fate.

The young man barely had time to blink the sweat and snow away from his eyes before a small ship landed nearby. His mind was so warped by the pain that he didn't register his surroundings until being roughly deposited on a cot. He caught a glimpse of Hux, sneering down at him, mocking his weakness.

A sharp needle prick was the only warning he received before the numbness of drugs trickled sluggishly through his body. It had been so long since he was injured severely enough to warrant such invasive medical treatment that his entire consciousness panicked, lashing out with the Force and struggling to find the familiar grip of lucid thought.

Sensation and reality bled together as Kylo managed to briefly regain coherency. He glimpsed the interior of the small ship, heard a murmur of voices, but the pain in his material body was so much that he retreated into the sickly-sweet darkness just to be free of it.

Once he had resigned himself to his fate, he let his mind drift in the haze, seeing without really seeing. The vivid images and sensations of his drug-induced dreams flitted by, some so quick that they were mere blurs but others moved slowly enough that he was able to make sense of them.

The dark eyes of the scavenger girl, her face glistening with sweat and studded with un-melted ice crystals as she met his red light saber with her stolen blue one–

Chewbacca crooning to him in Wookie-speak after a big fight with his parents, hugging him close and saying that Han and Leia were too prideful for their own good sometimes, but that at their core they loved him more than anything–

Luke smiling down at him after his first successful attempt to lift a stone using nothing but the Force, the pride he felt at pleasing his uncle–

Han Solo touching his face one last time, so tenderly that for a split second Kylo regretted–

Kylo's mind let out a terrible scream at that, piercing through the sluggish fog and sending him careening through the blackness at impossible speeds. But it wasn't fast enough; it would never be fast enough. In the chaos of his mind he couldn't escape the doubt, the confusion, the pain that pulsed through his body with ever beat of his heart.

He knew that killing Han Solo had freed him of his physical tie to his past and he had felt relief in completing his mission. For a blissful, wonderful moment, he thought all his problems had been eliminated. But that moment shattered when Han Solo touched Kylo's face instead of reaching for the blaster at his hip. Why had Solo done that? Why didn't he fight back like the criminal he was or walk away like the coward Kylo knew him to be?

Explosions of energy went off in his consciousness, explosions that radiated memory and grief instead of heat and destruction. Kylo felt a sharp stab of fear as he continued to fall; deeper and deeper into the abyss were the heaviness beckoned. A distant speck of light lay ahead, and from it a voice spoke.

"You were right about me. Tell your sister…you were right…"

The words were soft and feeble but carried a very familiar sort of power. A chill shuddered through Kylo's psyche. He knew that voice, he shouldn't know it and yet he did. But that was impossible, he had never even met the man who inspired his path to the Dark side, how could he possibly be hearing his voice?

Ben.

The name shot through Kylo like a bolt of lightning, and suddenly all the darkness bled away in a blinding swirl of color and light. His feet touched ground and the air around him hummed with the haziness that always accompanied dreams. But even with this knowledge, his heart still leapt in his chest at the sight of his childhood home. Not the Temple that his uncle had built, but the house on the lake. Everything was the same, from the smell of the trees to the glistening reflection of the buildings on the water. Even the sunlight felt the same; warm enough to burn his skin if he wasn't careful.

He should force himself to wake up. He should rebel against the accuracy of his memories because his Master would surely read it within his thoughts if he allowed it to linger so faithfully.

It had been twelve years since he had been sent to train with Skywalker. It wasn't until that moment, caught in a memory he assumed was long forgotten, that he realized just how strong of a hold his past still had. No wonder Snoke doubted him; he must have seen the careful detail etched into his mind, he must have felt the bitter longing rising in Kylo's throat with every moment he looked upon the only home he had ever known.

Kylo looked down at himself and his suspicion was confirmed – he was his thirteen-year-old self again. His body felt abuzz with youth and vitality, unburdened by the heaviness in his soul. He saw a ship waiting nearby and recognized the moment in time—it was the moment after his parents had told him that he needed to go with his uncle for a while, ignoring his pleas to stay and his desperate attempt to understand what he had done to deserve such a sentence.

His adult mind had eventually answered the questions his thirteen-year-old self craved answers to: his link with the Force was too powerful for his parents to handle, too volatile for them to see it as anything but evidence of the Dark Side. It was his fate to switch sides, it was in his genetics and Luke had done nothing to dissuade the idea. He had treated Kylo with caution, with love but with distant love. Like the love one has for a dog even after it grows too old to properly chew its food.

Kylo's younger body quivered with barely controlled rage, eyes stinging with tears of betrayal. He closed his eyes against the pull of this wonderful, horrible place and prepared to wake himself up. But before he could, he heard her voice.

"I know I'm dreaming," Leia Solo said, her voice devoid of any real emotion. It was a defeated tone, not the whiplash of a voice that Ben's memories held. Kylo opened his eyes in spite of his caution, peering over at the spitting image of Ben's mother the moment he had left his home planet—petite yet unmovable, beautiful yet hardened by war and loss.

She turned to face him. Instantly her eyes swelled with wetness until they looked overly full, like pools moments away from spilling over. Her lips trembled and her body stiffened with restrained emotion. Mirroring her son's current stance.

"My boy," she breathed, taking a step towards him. Kylo stiffened, holding himself in the way he had learned inspired fear. She stopped, and he sneered at her.

"Your boy is dead. As is your husband."

Leia's face spasmed with pain but only for an instant; a cold hardness immediately took its place. It was a mask Kylo had only seen in the Rebellion footage his Master had given him to study. The hardness looked strange on her younger features. What was his mind playing it, presenting him with this false interaction?

Leia's voice was low and cold. "Han is gone, and yet my mind chooses to show me this moment after his death. Chooses to break my heart even more by making me remember this instead of giving me happy memories to relive," she spat, turning away from Kylo and gripping at her hair.

"Haven't I endured enough?" she shouted across the lake, and Kylo sneered.

"You've endured nothing. You've been nothing but the cause of your own pain and yet you beg the universe to give you peace. No wonder your Rebellion is crumbling," Kylo drawled, stepping towards her.

This image of Leia was only in his dreams, but maybe if he could end her, too…maybe it would ease the brokenness inside of his heart. Maybe the Darkness could finally have its way and the Light would cease once and for all.

"You're right," she said, and Kylo's fingers froze mere centimeters from her throat. He took a step back, a jerky movement that contradicted his smug sneer.

"What?" he asked hoarsely, his young vocal chords straining to make his voice sound deeper than it was. Leia didn't look at him but he knew she was addressing him when she replied:

"The three of us fought for hours before the ship was set to leave. I wanted to go with you, to help you and protect you, but Han and Luke both argued against it. Luke had already seen glimpses of the darkness, as had I, but something in me knew that if I let you get on that ship…you'd never come back. What good would it do to send you away without a proper explanation, to live with a group of Force-users that treated you differently because of your power? Han got so angry with me, called me selfish, among other things. Luke was just…quiet. But I knew that he agreed with Han, and that I think was what convinced me to follow through, in the end. Luke was always so rational, always hiding how he felt rather than coming out and saying it. It was one of the things I could never fully accept about my brother; he never even tried to understand what it was like to have a child," Leia explained, her voice turning almost mocking at the end.

"It isn't the Jedi way to form such attachments," Kylo bit out, and Leia let out a laugh at that.

"Yes, and the Dark way is built on attachment, on emotion so strong it consumes us. Luke and I never really saw eye to eye after he took you away, because I realized that the Jedi and the Sith were wrong. The Dark and Light is in all of us. To try and purge ourselves entirely of either Light or Dark is a battle we will never, ever win. I fight for the Rebellion, not for the Jedi. I fight to protect people from those who have sunk so deeply into the Dark Side that all they can understand is total control and senseless violence."

Leia's words sunk like stones into Kylo's consciousness. Something sharp pierced his anger and like a balloon it began to deflate. He knew that this was a dream, but the desire to break free was growing fainter and fainter with every word she spoke.

"The Force just is. It doesn't recognize Light or Dark—people have come up with those labels themselves, to try and make the chaos of life easier to understand," Leia mused, almost to herself.

Kylo stood next to her, shocked into silence because his mind had somehow come up with that theory for the image of his mother to spew and how was that possible?

"I expected to feel the Darkness fully take over, when I…" Kylo began, but found that his throat simply wouldn't allow the words to continue. Leia looked at him, then, and the heartbreaking awareness in her eyes gave him permission to go on. "I wanted it to end, and for a moment it did. But it was only for a moment. He…he touched my face, and I could see his lips moving as if to say something, as if to…"

Like a dam finally reaching its capacity, Kylo's body convulsed with a deep cry of grief, bending over in an attempt to control it. His stomach heaved with bile that he couldn't expel and his eyes burned with hot tears. His breath came in harsh gasps, like he was running as fast as he could instead of standing still.

"He loved you more than anything," Leia whispered, and Kylo felt the tearing inside of him, that familiar wrench as his mind struggled to align itself. Leia took a deep breath before going on:

"I…I loved your father. He was selfish and brash and callous at times, but he was…he was my home. But…" Leia was crying as well, now, her voice remaining steady even as her lips trembled. "But you…you're my world. I watched the life enter your body and I watched you grow and laugh and cry. You are my imperfect, brave, wonderful son."

Leia slowly took a step towards him, and Kylo was lifted from his stooped position by something more powerful than pain, something that called to him even as his mind futilely fought against it.

"I never should have let you go," she choked out, raising her arms up in a silent plea.

In an instant, Kylo Ren became Ben Solo again. Those were the words his mother had never said on that day, and the arms she had never offered in order to console her terrified son. He let out a strangled sob and ran towards her, nearly knocking her over with the force of his embrace.

His mother smelled like expensive perfume and harsh engine chemicals, a scent that burned his nose in the best possible way. He clung to her, sobbing and muttering apologies and nearly breaking down again when he felt the soft touch of her hand against the back of his head, securing him against her.

"I can't go back. I can't escape my Master now," Ben whispered against his mother's shoulder.

"You can. I'm always here with you. I'm here and I'm not letting you go again," she said harshly, protectively, gripping him so tightly that his joints creaked under the strain.

"I killed him, Mom. I killed him and you'll never take me back," Ben cried, his eyes raw from crying and his chest aching from the heaving sobs. Leia shook her head against his neck, pulling back to look him in the eye, cupping his wet cheeks with her small, calloused hands.

"But look where your heart has taken you," she urged, gesturing to the lake, the house perched on the far cliffs. "It brought you back to me; it's given you this pain. Don't you see? You've already won the battle, you've kept a hold of the Light even after all these years…you're strong like your grandfather was, in the end. Come back to me, come back—"

Without warning, he was ripped from his mother's arms and his mind raced backwards, away from her and into reality once more. The haziness fled away from his mind like the night runs from the morning dawn, fading and fading until everything was clear again. The feeble voice of his grandfather echoed in his mind, words jumbled to the point where it was just noise.

And then it was over.

Kylo Ren opened his eyes, finding himself in the soft bed of a medical center. He was alone in the room, and for that he was grateful—for when he lifted his hand up to touch his bandaged face, he found the exposed skin of his cheeks wet with tears.

It was all a dream, a fantasy created by his own conflicted mind in an attempt to sway him from his path. But Kylo knew better than to be fooled by such weak desires.

He would heal from his injuries and go to his Master for guidance. Master Snoke would know what to do. He would help Kylo kill Ben Solo once and for all, and his path to the Dark Side would be without opposition.

Leia Organa awoke with a pained gasp, sitting up in her modest cot and staring into the dim lighting of her room, frantically reaching for the boy that she had just been holding moments before. But he was gone, ripped from her life just like Han had been.

The aging commander forced herself to lie back down, wiping the tears from her cheeks and struggling to regain her composure. But the tears continued to fall with no signs of abating.

It had felt so real, standing there on the shore of the lake next to Ben, hearing him confess and break down, a shell of the boy she had said goodbye to thirteen years ago and yet the very same. Leia had even let herself believe, after a while, that it was the Force linking them together, using their shared Force origins to allow them a moment to speak and share their grief. In those final moments, Leia had felt Ben's shoulders loosen, had seen the hope in his beautiful dark eyes as she told him that he was still good, that he had a place with her no matter what he had done.

But then the dream had ended and Leia woke up alone, as she had for so many years. Han was dead, Luke was nowhere to be found, and her dream in which she had spoken to Ben and held him was nothing more than a grief-induced fantasy.

That knowledge was such an excruciating weight on her chest that Leia gave up all pretenses of calm. In one quick movement, the woman turned and screamed into her pillow, staining the dark grey fabric with her tears.