"Ben . . ." She neither spoke nor whispered his name. She breathed it, and the breath had started somewhere deeper within herself than her lungs or her heart. The breath, like his name and his presence, his own consciousness now always trembling just beyond discernable sight and dancing in her mind like a twin flame, echoed from the chasm within herself.

Rey allowed her consciousness to seek him out in the darkness, and her thoughts were drawn to him, like iron filings to a lode stone. Like the needle, never failing to find north, she reached out and he was there.

It had been days since she had abruptly shoved him away through the force bond aboard the Falcon. Something had happened to the bond now that Snoke no longer guided it, and rather than withering, it had flourished. Before, one of them had had to consciously reach out towards the other, but now, he was simply always there. Her mind could conceive the sweep of the dunes, stretching from horizon to horizon, but she could not fathom the immensity of cold airless space that always stretched between Ben and herself. Regardless of the distance, his thoughts brushed at her mind whenever she was awake. When they were punctuated by a particularly strong emotion, like fear, or pain, she couldn't discern whether she heard them as though they rose from his tongue or if they existed only in her mind.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Her first two nights aboard the Falcon had been sleepless. She'd been treated for her own hurts, but there were places on her body that ached to the bone, others that seared with the kind of fire that made tears well in her eyes as she laid feverish in her cold bunk. Rey had torn away her clothes and spread trembling fingers over what felt like a deep gash across her upper leg, but was actually smooth, whole skin. Without warning, invisible teeth cut into her fingers, and though the skin was not pierced, a bite was outlined in someone else's blood on her skin. The pain in her leg seared, and she softly moaned. She writhed against the damp pillow.

An icy voice cut through the haze of pain. "You were a fool not to seek treatment before now. Supreme Ruler Snoke would be thoroughly disappointed to see his mighty apprentice brought low by a festering wound caused by a weak, untrained scavenger."

She opened her eyes and felt barely retrained rage and malevolence towards the pale ginger man looming over her. The humid closeness and pervading odor of solvents and hot fuel cells aboard the Falcon had faded away, and instead Rey's nose stung with a sharp astringent stench. The man lowered his face over hers, and though he was clearly trying to hide it, a satisfied smirk was forcing its way across his mouth. Her hands curled into claws with the urge to strike him.

"It was nothing." Though her own lips and tongue wrapped themselves around the words, Ben's voice spoke them into her ears.

Rey arched her back and writhed away from the pain as fine needles probed the phantom wound.

Ben . . . What's happening?

A tangle of emotions flooded through the bond to her. Relief, self-revulsion, anger, frustration, hope, a sulking sense of rejection, and even a gently simmering desire tumbled through the bond in varying degrees of intensity. Ben took a deep breath, and it filled her lungs. When she pressed intense wordless worry through the bond, his relief won out and washed over her, tinged with pleasure and softly glowing with a protective hope. She felt his body relax. The pain remained with the same intensity, but somehow it had been pushed away from his mind, replaced with his acknowledgement of her consciousness twinning his. The wickedly grinning ginger was gone, and Rey thought Ben must have closed his eyes.

His voice in her mind was firm but gentle. Not now . . . we can't do this in front of him. I can't let him suspect . . . Ben's thought trailed off, and she felt firm pressure against her fingers as though he squeezed them between his own.

You're in pain.

Something like a smile shimmered through the bond, riding on a wave of warm pleasure even over the pain that probed at his body. It lapped gently against her mind, and it comforted her. Rey smiled back at him in the dark, and though she knew he could not see it, he must have felt it. The warmth of his pleasure deepened and warmed substantially, and his pain receded to a sharp but distant sensation. Tension that had coiled in his muscles released, and he sighed.

I can bear it, now that I know . . .

The bond pinched closed between them gently, and Ben's mind withdrew reluctantly. He had pulled up a wall between them, and she could feel his pain vibrating in waves against the wall. What she had felt as deep agonizing pain before was now a dull ache. Gently, Rey had laid her mind against the wall, and she allowed concern and the desire to comfort to crawl across the surface of the wall like tendrils of smoke. She knew Ben was fully aware of her presence on the other side. The wall vibrated as though buffeted, and she suspected that he used the entirety of his considerable strength to prevent it from shattering and allowing his own agony to wash over her. She pressed her will against his, and she felt an answering hum that she knew was all that he could spare in acknowledgement. In time, she felt the tension break with a soft, silent snap, and the wall between them dissolved. The weight of Ben's mind sank gratefully but wordlessly into her own. Her consciousness cradled his, and she felt him turn his mind away from wherever he was and he was more present. Something like a sigh passed between them, and she knew he slept.

Since that night, the pattern of her own waking and resting had started to subtly change so that she rose a few hours before the other survivors of the Rebellion, and exhaustion forced her to seek her bunk before they did. She suspected that her body was recalibrating itself so that she woke and slept tandem with Ben.

Rey was often distracted. Her attention straggled amidst the discussions and arguments between the shifting factions of the Rebellion leadership. She was never able to fully focus or pull herself away from the impressions that filtered back to her from Ben's mind. One afternoon, she'd had to cower for a couple of hours behind some crates of rations in a bulk head while Ben endured an excruciating treatment he couldn't shield her from. Finn had found her, crouched with her head between her knees and arms wrapped around her head and legs, rocking and sobbing. When he had coaxed her from her hiding place, she'd been too weak to stand and had nearly vomited.

Finn had pulled her arm over his shoulders and was helping her to her feet when Rey felt Ben's consciousness open inside her. Ben was suddenly present in a way he hadn't been in days. For an instant, he was inside her skin.

When he saw Finn through Rey's eyes and felt his arms around her, seething jealousy flooded her mind. Rey felt through the bond that Ben had reached out to comfort and be comforted, knowing that she had endured the pain with him. She felt that Ben loathed himself for both needing the solace he could find only in her and for not having the strength to shield her from the worst of his reflected suffering. Ben had been crushed to find Finn comforting her. When he drew sharply away, Rey felt his sense of betrayal, bitter and black and acrid on her tongue. It tasted like cold, wet ash.

Rey pursued his mind, reaching and grasping for him, but he was too fast. Every time she had nearly caught the trail of his bitter hurt, he twisted and writhed away. Eventually, her mind slammed against his iron will, and she slid down the smooth surface of his icy resolve. She pounded against it with her mind, weak from the hours of his reflected agony, and she called his name into the dark. She heard a sound like one whetted blade grinding against another, and beneath it she felt Ben's cry of despair tear her own throat. Since then, he'd been present but silent.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Tonight, he felt more substantial, more present than he had for days. Tentatively, Rey reached out her consciousness and probed his. She felt his exhaustion. Ben hadn't been sleeping, and when he slept he had nightmares. He was exhausted by the effort of constantly pulling his mind away from hers, and she could feel that an empty, weary kind of gnawing jealousy simmered beneath a brittle need for communion with her.

Rey sat up in the dark from the thin, ancient mattress that covered the shelf bunk, and it creaked beneath her weight. She'd laid awake for hours, hoping that tonight he'd finally relax his anger enough to let her reach out to him.

"Ben." She could feel him start to pull away. Please stop. I rode every moment out with you; it's not my fault someone found me.

Doubt filtered back to her through the bond. Ben hovered over the cusp of the wall he had erected between them, not wanting to retreat behind it, but afraid to let her consciousness probe his own too deeply. He waited in tense silence, unwilling to go, hoping she would say something to soothe his broken soul, hating himself for aching for it.

I felt your pain. What did they do to you?

It was nothing.

"It wasn't nothing."

Rey extended her left hand. Even though her quarters were plunged into such velvety blackness that she couldn't see her hand, she knew Ben wouldn't need light to see her clearly. She could feel the weight of his gaze, and he gasped when he saw the bruise across her fingers and knuckles made by the crush of his teeth on his own hand.

"Why don't they give you anything for your pain?"

My master always forbade it. "He said that such medicine was for the weak. If truly my pain was nothing, it would need no treatment."

Rey had felt a slight movement in the air of her berth, and she knew he was there. She let her relief trickle through the bond, and she felt a cautious pleasure and brittle gratitude tremble in response. Show me.

After several minutes of silent, tense consideration, Ben allowed a memory to slide back across the bond to Rey. She saw him crouching over a steel grate at Snoke's feet. Blood oozed from a younger Ben's long nose, and each of his long, delicate fingers were mangled, obviously broken and crushed. Dull agony washed over her, and she felt waves of pain wash from his ruined hands up her arms. It made her head swim, and she nearly retched on the floor. Snoke snarled over Ben, his hand an outstretched and trembling claw. Ben quivered silently at his feet, and blood welled beneath his teeth where he bit into his lip to prevent himself crying out in pain. Snoke grinned maliciously as he forced the shattered bones of Ben's hand to grind together, and after several agonizing moments, Ben finally silently succumbed to the pain and fainted at Snoke's feet. Rey sighed with relief when the aching in her hands and the nausea receded with the memory.

"I felt you beside me. It was . . . soothing."

Through the bond, she pressed a feeling a gratitude that he had returned to her. She showed him her memory of how his pain had receded when he had perceived her concern, including the thread of emotions that had tumbled through the bond with his agony.

With the memory had gone her reaction to his unchecked feelings. She felt him pause when he registered that she had rejected neither his pain nor any of the feelings that had flowed through the bond in that moment. Not even the undercurrent of simmering desire she had awoken in him. She felt him savor the thought for the fraction of a second before a whisper of embarrassment snuck back across the musty dark between them.

Rey rose from her bunk and stretched her fingers out into the dark as she stepped forward. She had noticed that when they were both fully present through the bond, neither of them seemed to be strictly bound by the restrictions of their individual physical spaces. Though she should have been stopped by the wall of her berth in the Falcon after only a few steps, she was able to slowly cross a few yards before her fingertips connected with Ben's.

Ben was nervous and tense. Through the bond, Rey felt the dull jealousy throb, tangled with an intense desire to be touched. She laid her palms gently against his and slid the tips of her fingers between his, though she did not grip his hand. She could feel his breath softly tickle over her face, and the warmth of bare skin radiated from his body, so near.

"When was the last time someone touched you with kindness?"

Ben went stiff, but did not draw away. She felt him pull his emotions back, hard, so that they would not flood into her mind. Rey reached out with her consciousness and gently stroked the manifestation of his will that he was struggling to use to keep the feelings tamped down. She allowed concern to seep around him, and she hummed in silent inquiry through the bond.

She felt his will tremble and soften, though he did not allow his feelings to flow back to her. He finally answered with low, clipped words, "A long time ago."

Rey took another step closer, and she laid her cheek and temple against his chest. Ben gasped, and she felt his will, struggling to hold his emotions back, shake and nearly dissolve beneath their weight. At the last moment, he pulled it tighter. Rey turned her face to the side, and her nose grazed the ridge of a long-healed scar across his breast.

"No one ever touches you at all, do they?"

"No."

A memory escaped, and she saw the needle sharp probes of a droid dart forward with absolute precision as they knit the flesh of his face back together. Rey reached her hand up and laid it on Ben's cheek, covering the scar that was the remnant of her rage. Her thumb stroked slowly across his cheek and up to the bridge of his nose.

"I am sorry." Rey pressed regret through the bond. She felt his will uncoil subtly, and surprise reflected back to her. No one had said that to him since he had been a very small child abandoned at the temple with his uncle. He'd almost forgotten the sound and meaning of the word. Leia's wide brown eyes filled her mind, and Rey reeled with the emotions that came with a mother's soft kiss pressed to his forehead.

"It is nothing."

With his words came a thought he was embarrassed to voice, and Rey saw that he relished the scar. Even when the healing gash had itched maddeningly beneath his mask, it had been a constant reminder of her. At first, it had been a focus of his rage, but he had never had been able to sustain his anger indefinitely, and rage had turned into . . . something else. Curiosity at first, and eventually hope.

Ben had tried to guard his feelings for her from Snoke. He was humiliated by the knowledge that Snoke had anticipated Ben's fascination and attraction to Rey, cultivated it, and had used his heart as a tool to draw her into a trap that nearly cost them both their lives. Ben pulled his feelings back savagely, and thought sullenly at Rey, It is nothing.

Rey tipped her hand back and traced the path of the healing scar with her thumb. "Not to me." She looked up into his face and searched his eyes. "Not . . . to me."

Ben's will broke like a dam, and thoughts and memories and feelings washed over her mind. Her consciousness floundered in the deluge, and she lost all sense of where her mind stopped and Ben's began. She saw a beautiful young girl at the Jedi temple with green eyes that tipped up at the corners and sparkled and teased. Rey watched the girl practice forms and felt Ben's adolescent longing for the girl rise within her. Her laugh rang cruelly in Rey's ears, and she felt Ben's crushing sense of rejection. Rey knew what had never occurred to Ben, drowning in his own sense of worthlessness. The girl had been a coquette who had realized she had the power to wound the master's powerful nephew.

Ben's fingers had closed over Rey's hands, and without realizing it, he was grinding her bones together as he scrambled to regain control of his escaping thoughts, memories, and feelings. The last thing Rey saw before Ben crammed his feelings back down inside himself was Finn pulling her up off the floor of the Falcon where she had ridden out Ben's agony. A wall of searing jealousy and rage collapsed around her, this time not filtered through the bond, but with the full force of how Ben had felt it at the time.

Ben ripped his mind away from Rey and released her, but she grabbed his hands, balled into fists, to stop him from retreating from the force bond. Though he tried to keep his feelings guarded, she felt humiliation and jealousy and frustrated desire seethe behind his eyes. She squeezed his enormous hands tightly, and she pressed her memory of Finn tenderly tending to Rose on the Falcon against Ben's mind. When Ben tried to brush it away, Rey persisted, and showed him the way Rose and Finn looked at one another when she had encountered them by chance in a corridor the following day.

Ben turned his face away and jerked at his hands, but Rey refused to release him, even though she felt him receding down the path of the force bond. She abandoned the attempt to show him Finn, and instead showed Ben their battle with the Praetorian Guard. Ben paused, and allowed her to replay her memory against his. Their memories synchronized, their breaths slowed and became one, and they felt their way together through the shared memories.

When she had stood at his back, for the first time in his life, Ben had felt complete. He had felt worthy and cherished and protected; he felt purpose. Rey looked into Ben and saw that there had always been a chasm within him that he had tried to fill with hate and rage after Skywalker's betrayal, but the emptiness had been too great. All his life, he had felt abandoned and unloved, powerless and discarded. Unneeded, dispensable, small, and irrelevant. Unworthy. Undesirable and disposable. Broken, flawed, and dangerous. Warped by Snoke's effort to twist him into an empty mindless weapon. Hot tears coursed down Rey's face when she saw that Ben had felt all of this and more. Dull rage echoed through Rey that Skywalker had seen only a threat, Snoke only a tool.

Ben had felt the moment when Snoke had breathed his last. When his master's consciousness drained away, the force bond had flooded between Ben and Rey unabated. In that moment, he had realized that the chasm within him echoed precisely the size and shape of her soul. With her back pressed against his, for the first time since small child, he did not feel alone.

As the Praetorians fell one after another beneath his fiery blade, he had tried to fight his way back to her. He had even felt the Praetorian blade slash through her arm. When her pain seared through the bond, his own fear was replaced by terror for what could happen to her.

When their eyes met, he had found the calm and balance his uncle had failed to teach him. Ben knew Rey fought for him, and the conflict within him was gone. No longer was there Light and Dark. There was only Rey and entirety of the Force stretching between them, complete and whole. When she yielded her weapon to save his life, he knew he'd never be alone again.

When Ben had felt her disappointment, it had crushed the air from his lungs, but Rey's rejection had nearly broken him. Though it pained him to reveal it, Ben allowed her to see that she had reforged him and then shattered him. He showed her how, distraught, he'd hammered away impotently at the wall she'd erected between them when she closed the door of the Falcon, but had finally given up with despair at her loss.

Rey allowed her feelings to flow back into Ben with her memory of those frenzied moments before Snoke's throne. Through the bond, she had seen the three Praetorians bearing down upon him, and though Ben had set his jaw and thrown himself at them in determined silence, she had roared his rage at the guard before her. She had dispatched him and turned, Ben's comingled fear and bloodlust bubbling up inside her. Though she had cut down every Praetorian between them, another had always thrown himself before her.

She felt the moment when Ben's fear for himself transmuted into fear for her, and above all, she felt his desire to be at her side. To him, she knew she was precious, irreplaceable, invaluable; his certainty filled her own emptiness. His need called to her, and the call was intoxicating, evocative. To be wanted with such intensity, but to snap the bond shut when he had begged for her to join him had taken every ounce of her will. By the time Rey had allowed the wall between them to crumble, Ben had succumbed to exhaustion and had not sensed the agony and regret that had wracked her that night. He had slept through the hours she had sobbed in the dark, whispering his name and reaching out through the bond, not understanding why he didn't answer. Rey allowed the memory to pour into Ben now, and he was both relieved and abashed.

Ben spread his hands around Rey's face, cradling it tenderly. "Come back to me. You know I will protect you. Nothing can stand against us if we are together."

Ben opened his mind just a sliver, and Rey saw that what he promised was true. The thought of hurting her sickened him, and he knew that though his own suffering was agony to her, her loss would break something in him already so fragile that it was constructed of cobwebs and dust motes.

Rey allowed the regret that promised to choke her seep through the bond into Ben, and she saw it cloud his face. "I can't come back and watch innocent people be crushed beneath the heel of the First Order." She felt him begin to withdraw from her, so she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her body against his fiercely. "I can't be beside you now, but you're never going to be alone again. I won't leave you."

Ben lowered his face and pressed his trembling lips to Rey's. Rey felt hope and desire beat their wings frantically against despair and regret in Ben's heart. She rose on her toes and opened her mouth to meet his kiss, and he released her face and gathered her into his chest. When she returned his first soft, tentative kiss, Rey felt a floodgate of fear unlock inside Ben, and he sobbed with relief that she did not spurn him. The first tendrils of his tremulous nascent love crawled through their bond towards Rey like wisps of smoke. With Ben's arms wrapped around her, every carefully constructed wall between them shredded like wet paper and fell away. As the intensity of Ben's kisses increased, the force bond was forced wider and wider, and years of memories poured between them, fears were revealed, deepest hopes and desires tentatively offered lest they be crushed with derision.

Rey saw that Ben's need to be loved consumed him, and she saw the shape of his future, that with her beside him, he could find balance and become whole. Knowing that his need was laid bare before her, he pressed thoughts like promises into her mind, though each one was tinged with terror that she would turn away his offerings.

He saw her wonder at the beauty of Takodana, and he offered her a vision of a place like a paradise, green as far as the eye could see with two moons and gentle rains in the evening. Rey curled a hand over his shoulder and spread the other across his broad back, and when he pressed her more tightly against himself, Rey could feel that he was losing himself in the joy her acceptance and touch. His kisses became deeper, and she felt the desire of a man aching to be loved flood into her. From his yawning emptiness, his bottomless loneliness, she felt that a rich, boundless passion crouched in fear, hers if she would have it. His touch had become fire, and she was shocked to feel that her own desire was awakened when she felt his body stir against her.

Encouraged to feel Rey's heart opening to him, Ben gave her more of his mind. She caught glimpses of how she looked to him, and she saw she was cherished. She saw herself strong and powerful and defiant, and she felt that it roused him. She saw herself as though she was transparent, and that he felt the force flowing through her, like light emanating from a star, and this vision came with the wonder of a monk looking upon the revelation of a great mystery. She saw something that she couldn't name as dream or hope or promise sneak unbidden from between his loosening grasp upon his emotions, and she saw herself arrayed in costly silks and adorned in jewels like a queen, and he beamed down at her with love.

No . . . I don't want that. At this she pulled away, and she felt his confusion and dread. He looked searchingly into her, both of their minds too deeply locked in their bond to attempt speech, and she saw confusion and doubt and fear cloud his eyes. She searched through her mind frantically, frustrated that he must be able to see the many images that flashed before her mind's eye as she searched for a thought that would explain adequately. Ben began to release Rey with aching sorrow and self-revulsion, and she felt the whisper of her own voice declaring, Monster!, and Ben's poignant, anguished, Yes, I am. She clutched him and insisted, Wait!

Finally the Force itself presented the answer she sought, and Rey pushed the memory of a dream that had presented itself to her all her life back through the bond. She showed him two trees, one taller with wood like iron, and one shorter, with wood like stone. Each trunk was too wide for even scores of men, linked hand to hand, to wrap their arms around. In the very narrow space between the two trunks flowed a placid stream. The water was inadequate to separate the two, and the branches of the trees were so thickly intertwined over the water that they could not be distinguished one from the other. Beneath the earth, their roots had twined themselves inseparably. Though the light had scorched the earth around them, their shared canopy presided over a golden twilight of idyllic peace rising from fertile earth held fast by their roots.

She impressed upon him that she had dreamed of this long before she had even known what a tree was, but always she had known one of the trees was her . . . and now she saw that the other was him.

Finding her tongue, Rey explained, "For there to be balance, peace, the light cannot be severed from the dark. Life only flourishes in the space between them."

When Ben lifted her chin and reclaimed her mouth, Rey wasn't sure he had understood precisely what she had meant, but she felt his flood of profound relief that she didn't revile him. She could feel his conviction that the Force had bound them inseparably, and for now, that was enough for him.

The deluge of memories, thoughts, and emotions that had flowed between them began to ebb, and as the tide of Ben's tortured soul receded, she felt a growing awareness of the man that bore it. His kisses became simultaneously gentler and more insistent, slower and more intense. Rey closed her eyes and for a moment lost herself in the feel of him in the dark, and through the force bond, she felt something she could only describe as a growl of pleasure that answered something building inexorably and intoxicatingly within her.

Rey was so lost, in fact, that she neither heard nor saw the blaster shot that sang through the dark. She was sunk so deep into Ben's mind, buoyed up by his desire, that when he slowly lifted his face from where his lips were pressed sweetly to her throat, Rey's consciousness looked out of Ben's dark eyes with him. Ben had extracted himself out of the rich reverie between them ponderously to find Finn standing slack-jawed in the open doorway to Rey's berth, unable to comprehend the scene before him. It had taken Rose's shot, blessedly wide from her intended target, to shake Ben from their communion. He was slow to untangle his consciousness from Rey's and as the tendril of this thoughts pulled slowly, so reluctantly away, he felt her alarm sizzle.

Don't hurt them!

Ben released Rey and stepped around her. Rose was about to take her second shot, this time without Rey in the way, and he threw out a hand to force Finn into Rose, slamming both of them into the wall of the corridor.

Ben turned at once to Rey. "Come with me!"

"Go! You can't stay here!"

Ben immediately countered, "It's not safe now—"

Rey cut off his objection with a kiss, and insisted, "Go!" she slammed their force bond shut, and he was gone.

Rey felt Ben's roar of frustration from the other side of their bond, and she could feel him slamming the entire weight of his considerable power against her. He was blind with fear, desperate to get back to her. Rey was shaken by the intensity of Ben's desire to reach her and was struggling with the effort of reconstituting her thoughts and emotions after being ripped away from him. She was almost groggy.

Ben's rage was beginning to reach the same roaring pitch as it had when they fought the Praetorian Guard, once again driven by fear for her rather than anger, but this time amplified a hundred fold by the unsated lust that had built in their final moments together. Rey pressed her eyes shut and though her heart hammered in her throat, she pressed reassurances through the tiniest crack in the barrier between them that she dared allow.

Ben . . . She saw his saber in his hand and smelled it singe the air. Ben's anger was continuing to build, but this time with a razor-sharp focus she'd never felt within him. No whisper of conflict remained within him, and she felt him summon power that before had remained ragged, raw, and untapped, unreachable before when his heart had been split. She could feel the tension ricochet through his body, and she saw a pair of storm troopers practically scurry for cover when they saw him striding through the corridor.

Give me your coordinates! I'll come for you myself. I won't permit them to harm you.

"Stop! Stay there! They won't hurt me. I promise! Please don't come! If you come, the First Order will find us, and all hope for balance will be lost. What you want," Rey pushed the passion and heat of their last few minutes together back to Ben, and she felt his response viscerally echo in his flesh, "could be destroyed so easily. Stay there." Stay safe.

Rey saw him stop in the middle of the corridor, and his cloak swirled around him. Stay safe. Who had been the last person who had cared if he lived or died? She felt his urge to leap to the attack struggle against his fear that acting rashly could destroy everything. He knew Hux watched him; they all watched him. Ben choked on his fear, but she felt his conscious effort to push it down. Rey was surprised to feel Ben strip something away from the barrier between them, a tapping of her own power, and he wrapped it around his own. She felt his chest heave with deep breaths, but he very intentionally recalled the blade of his weapon. Through their bond, Rey felt his voice growl, I will feel it if they hurt you. I don't need your coordinates. I will come, and I will kill them all. With something like a caress, she felt his mind withdraw reluctantly.

Rey shuddered when she felt Ben's mind leave hers. She raised trembling hands in surrender before opening her eyes.

Finn knelt on the floor of the corridor frozen, but Rose had leveled her blaster at Rey, and her mouth was a stone knot. Opening herself to Ben had amplified her sensitivity to the Force to near painful acuity, but Rey didn't need it to feel the sense of disgust and betrayal that shone from Rose's sweet eyes, now narrowed with rage. The blaster fire had summoned a crowd, and though Po had drawn his weapon and pointed it at her, he looked unconvinced. Worse, though, Ben's own mother had also appeared in the doorway, and the look in her eyes was haunted.

"Commander Dameron," General Organa softly commanded, "take Rey into custody. I'd not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."