-I-

The thing I didn't want to admit was that I wanted to see Ben Solo again.

Fortunately for me, this wasn't something I had to deal with on a day-to-day basis. It wasn't possible, anyway, even if maybe, perhaps, we could have connected somehow through our force bond.

Sure, sometimes I felt him in my peripherals, or I thought I did. I tried to ignore him when that happened, partly due to denial, convincing myself that it was my imagination, and partly due to fear, afraid that if I were to give it my full attention then it would be real, and then I'd have to deal with it. The thing was, I didn't want to deal with it, with him, because he and it and everything was just so complicated, and I had enough to deal with without him in my mind.

I suppose it was silly to call him "Ben Solo", anyway, but in my stubbornness, I continued to do so, if only in my mind. Everyone else called him "Kylo Ren". Except his mother, whom I loved.

It was a blasted shame about the galactic radiation that got Leia Organa. After everything she did and everything she was capable of, she couldn't shake what two unshielded minutes in space can do to a person. Even the Force couldn't save her. At least we got her for another year; another year and a half if you count the time she was confined to the medical frigate. She hated that medical frigate, and she let us all know it, yet she still did everything she could to try to survive the radiation poisoning, hopeful to the end.

The end was an interesting time. I sat with her as often as I could, because it was at this time that she opened the wellspring of what she wanted me to know, what she wanted the galaxy to know, and especially what she wanted Ben Solo to know.

I think she knew, somehow, that I would talk to Ben again. I think, even though I never told her, that she knew to some extent of my accidental relationship with her son, that the Force had brought us together, that, somehow, he and I were fated to mix in strange ways. She said as much, near the end, when she was losing her grip on the iron general façade she'd held up for decades. At the end, he was nearly all she wanted to talk about. I obliged her, not only for her sake, but for mine. I felt as if I needed to talk about him, but I had never been able to do so, not with anyone. Until Leia.

"There is still light in him, I know it," I told her, feeling every word I said.

"I know," said Leia, succinct.

"I've seen it," I said, saying it as much for my own sake as for hers.

"Good," she said, "So have I."

It was comforting to know someone else knew him and had seen what I had seen in Kylo Ren. As I sat by her bedside, or her chairside, or her tableside, I grew to know Ben Solo in a different dimension than I had previous. I knew his childhood. I knew stories of his youth that made me laugh and others that made me cry. I knew the very feelings of apprehension mixed with joy and hope that Ben gave his mother as his life began. I knew her sorrow, a sharp, stretching pain that had lingered for years on end, rising and falling like a galactic tide. I felt a sorrow, too, for her and her lost son, for him and his lost mother, and my own sorrow at watching this tragedy unfold in real time, and for the impending loss of Leia in my life. I had already lost Ben's father, and his uncle… and then as his mother was on the cusp of death I wondered how it all would strike Ben. I wondered if he felt it, too.

I would soon know well enough what he felt, for when Leia died his presence in my peripherals was both palpable and raw. Perhaps it was my own unwillingness to ignore him… not then, I couldn't ignore him then, not just as she'd died. That I happened to be there at the right moment was perhaps the will of the Force.

She'd passed away peacefully in her room on the medical frigate, and I was the only one there. I felt it, in the Force, her passing. I wondered at it.

I felt him before I saw him. I always felt him before I saw him. Before, I'd refused to look at him, but I couldn't anymore. The intensity that roiled out from him through the Force was unignorable. I wouldn't have ignored him, anyway. His mother had just died. I turned to look at him.

He was a raven, becloaked and brooding upon a fiercely minimalistic First Order chair in blackness, his pale moon of a face smoothed beneath a façade of control. Despite his control, there were signs of wear. He looked tired. His eyes were rimmed with red. He saw me look at him and it disarmed him, forming cracks in his veneer. I knew he was stricken with grief.

"Ben," I said.

I watched him draw a breath and let it out, all while gazing at me.

"Rey," he replied, as if it were a shorthand greeting.

I glanced at his mother, then back at him.

"I'm… sorry," I offered, knowing it wasn't enough.

He looked away.

"Ben," I insisted.

"What?" he asked, his temper short.

I thought about the stories Leia had told me about Ben as a child, and it made me sad. It made me grieve for Ben Solo, the innocent.

I stood up and he glanced up at me from where he sat, wary of my movement.

"She loved you," I said.

He ignored me, turning aside.

"She talked of almost nothing but you towards the end," I said.

"I cannot believe you," he said.

"It's true," I said, and I moved closer to him.

"What do you want?" he asked, casting a bitter gaze up at me.

How tightly his shell was wound about him! I knew, however, because I could feel; he suffered. I wondered how much he'd suffered in these past eighteen months. It pressed outward, out of him, in waves of the Force.

I reached out with the intent to touch his shoulder, but he drew back.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Shut up," I said, and I touched him, and his breath caught at once.

I felt the tactile feel of his tunic beneath my hand, quilted, embroidered with threads of gold, and underneath, the solid shoulder, the beginnings of blade and clavicle, the tightening of anxiety and tendon, and under deeper still, the essence of him. His breath and heartbeat pulsed through my fingers and the Force wound through us, mixing, blending, rewarding, pleased.

"Ben," I heard myself say, just above a whisper.

He glanced at my hand and I felt his breath puff against my skin. Then, he looked up at me. The tightness of his countenance released, and he surrendered, perhaps beguiled by the Force. Gone was the bitter glass from his eyes. His gaze was open, completely open.

"I'm sorry," I said again, this time to Ben Solo, who was listening, and I felt at once the crushing weight of Leia Organa being gone from my life and the Resistance. Tears stung at my eyes and I turned my head aside.

Though I was unable to see through my momentary tears, I felt his hand, his rough, reaching, tender hand over mine, against mine, grasping mine, roughly, clumsily, trying to communicate but numb and unfamiliar with this sort of use.

Spilling down over my cheeks, my tears were relieved, and my sight returned. At once I looked to Ben, whose face had a telling trail of wet, and a trembling caution, an unsure, jagged composure held together by the barest strings.

I claimed the last two steps between us and embraced him, enveloping him with a nurturing I wasn't sure I possessed until it came over me, crushing his forehead to my sternum, holding his shoulders, pushing a hand, my fingers, into his hair.

He stiffened at first, and then something broke inside of him. His arms twisted around my waist and he held me, falling against me like a great weight finally released, his shoulders bowed in defeat.

I heard the smallest of noises escape him, yet that sound spoke volumes of his grief. My hands fell through and through his hair, the plainest of comfort-strokes, but it was the best I knew how to do.

Our state was one of mutual cease-fire in the face of shared sorrow.

It was only after the passing of some minutes that I began to wonder how we could physically manifest to each other with such entirety. It seemed effortless for us both, yet merely a projection of similar proportions was enough to kill Luke Skywalker.

Ben seemed hesitant to face me, to go to the in-between space of neither adversaries nor embracing. It did, perhaps, feel awkward. I brushed his hair from his face and attempted to draw back, and he released me some, but with regret coursing through his arms and hands. I gently coaxed his chin upward, so I could meet his gaze. His gaze came to mine in a jagged line, not straight, not directly, not until the last moment.

"You…" he said, and I sensed and felt and heard bitterness rush back into him, held at bay by our embrace, coloring him sharp and cruel, "You cut me off eighteen months ago."

"You chose to stay with the First Order," I said, perhaps equally cruel, but feeling justified.

"I did nothing of the sort," he said, his voice low and resentful.

I couldn't believe he'd say that, as untrue as it was.

"That is exactly what you did," I said.

He stood at once, and his disagreement was clear in his stance, in how he faced me. It was the same as when we fought through the Force for his, my, our lightsaber. The one we'd broken in two. The one I cobbled back together into a two-edged staff.

"It is you who made a choice that day," he seethed. "You chose to stay with the Resistance. I wanted to end all this, but you refused."

"How is it you believe you could have ended all this?" I asked, amazed at his delusion, and waving a hand in the direction of the many wars amongst our stars.

"We could have done anything," he said, his glare boring a hole through the blind optimism in his words.

I stared at him.

Unable to form a response, I turned away, shaking my head in disbelief.

"You know it to be true," he said.

"I do not," I said, sharp, fixing him with a gaze, trying to pretend something wasn't nagging at me, that maybe, just maybe, there was some truth to his words. Or a lot of truth. It was too exciting of a prospect for me to handle at the time. I was afraid, when it came right down to it, afraid I would believe him and then be proven wrong. I couldn't handle the loss.

He merely returned my gaze then, and silently reclined upon his chair, as if ceding the day, but only the day. I knew he would be back, and with a vengeance, trying to convince me of things of which I wasn't ready to be convinced. I didn't want him to go. I wondered if the force-bond would end, I wondered when it would end, I felt a prickling across the nape of my neck in anxiety as I realized I didn't want it to end, I didn't want him to go.

I drew a small breath to speak.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked him. It was almost conversational, and that seemed wrong, but I wanted him to stay.

He glanced aside as if thinking how to respond.

"Mourn, I suppose," he replied, his eyes distant, glancing at things I couldn't see. Parts of the First Order's headquarters, I assumed. Then he added, "Alone."

He didn't look embittered by the prospect; he seemed accustomed to it. My heart wanted to break at once, and he must have sensed it because his eyes shifted, tight, to me, almost like a warning, but I ignored his glance.

"Ben," I said, as I kept saying, and I came near him again. "You're not alone."

"I have been," he replied.

Then I felt guilt. I'd left him alone, after we'd told each other neither of us would be alone anymore. Yet, indignance rose in me, sharp, sudden, raw.

"What should I have done after you tried to murder everyone I love?" I demanded.

He stood again, forcing me to look up at him.

"You saved the Resistance," he said to me.

"Yes, I did," I replied.

"By doing so, you saved this war," he said. "Now, because of you, it continues."

I found myself blinking, trying to think through what he'd said.

His gaze turned a little wry.

"Was it worth it?" he asked, his voice soft, yet intent. "Was it worth everyone who will die in the future as a result? Is this what you envisioned?"

I looked away from him, confused by his questioning, not sure what he was trying to get at.

"Rey," he said, his voice still soft, drawing me back into his gaze.

"What?" I asked, though my voice sounded softer than I'd intended.

He stepped closer, and I could smell him, and his scent was sharp and clean and heady. Like machinery and leather and warmth and cold all together in an unstable alliance. I remembered it from the throne room of Snoke, and the scent brought back more of my senses from that time.

"Do you believe me that I wanted to end all of this?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said, "You've never lied to me."

"Then why did you go?" he asked.

"Because I couldn't let them die," I replied, almost pleading that he understand. "How could I? How could I have lived with myself if I had?"

I felt tears sting my eyes at the impossibility of the situation.

He glanced over my face and looked miserable.

"There's nothing else I could have done," I said, as a tear spilled down my cheek. "As far as I'm concerned, there was no choice to be made."

He watched the tear fall from my chin.

"But you had the power to stop it," I accused, threatened by more tears.

"I did not," he said.

"Why not?" I said, as my vision blurred in grief.

"I cannot stop a juggernaut like the First Order alone," his voice said.

I covered my face with my hands. There was silence, a waiting, moments pressed into long strands of time, and then I felt his hand touch me on the wrist, light, scarce, hesitant and unsure.

I was so relieved by his touch, I forgot to be angry. My hands fell away from my face as he claimed my wrist, grasping it.

"Don't go," I said, nonsensically.

"How can I decide that?" he asked, reclaiming my gaze, as well.

"I… just don't want you to," I said.

"I don't want to, either," he replied.

"Ben," I breathed.

He pulled me at once, by the wrist, into his arms, and I was crushed into his steely machinery, his nuclear fission, his cold-hot juxtapose.

Resist, I did not.

It could be said, possibly, that I melted like a snowball in the Jakku sun, or that I fell apart like matter in a Death Star, or that my mind left me and I became one with the Force that was Us.

There was nothing, despite our impossible circumstances, that could have felt better in that moment than being clung to, endeared to, desperate for, and wholly embraced by Ben Solo or Kylo Ren or both or the oscillation between the two. I clung back, as if an immense gravity had thrown us together and our only relief could be found in surrender.

How darkly humorous it was that the Force chose then to end our contact. He faded from my arms and the lack of him was acute. It bordered on physical pain. I wanted him back. I wanted him back.

I stood for long moments, my shattered breaths the only sound, staring at the wall behind where he once stood, yet never stood, lightyears away.

I was alone, and nearby, Leia Organa was dead.

The door opened.

It was Poe Dameron, the shameless flirt.

There was no flirt in him now, for he saw my wrecked state and he saw General Organa, motionless on her bed.

"Oh, no," said Poe, his face a block of compassion.

I sniffed and pushed a tear from my cheek, moving towards Leia's body.

"She passed away a few minutes ago," I said.

"Oh, no," breathed Poe, sorry, sad, his hand outstretched to touch her unfeeling arm, his head falling to bow.

He knows how to grieve properly, was what I thought in that moment, wondering if I would ever manage to know how to do anything properly.

We stayed there for long minutes, silent sentinels grieving her passing, as stars passed above, unaware of our microscopic details.

-o-